SB 742.
Bump and update, as they say. Oregon State Sen. John Minnis (R-Fairview) had proposed SB 742, which would nebulously define terrorism and impose a mandatory minimum sentence of 25 years without parole for said nebulous terrorists. It looks doomed to failure, but doomed like Jason or Freddie Kreuger or the Terminator: it’ll be back.
Minnis said he will rewrite portions of the bill in an attempt to address concerns about the broad language and role Oregon police agencies would have in federal terror investigations. No additional hearings have been scheduled on the bill.
“Unfortunately, there’s a lot of hysteria associated with some of the original language” of the bill, he said. “I will bring something back and see if it works.”
Forget the definition of terrorism that’s been the bill’s contentious flashpoint—
SECTION 1. A person commits the crime of terrorism if the person knowingly plans, participates in or carries out any act that is intended, by at least one of its participants, to disrupt:
(a) The free and orderly assembly of the inhabitants of the State of Oregon;
(b) Commerce or the transportation systems of the State of Oregon; or
(c) The educational or governmental institutions of the State of Oregon or its inhabitants.
Keep your eye on what Minnis does to get the real meat of the bill passed. Again, from the Statesman-Journal:
Representatives of racial and ethnic minorities said they are troubled by two other aspects of the bill.
One would require local police to cooperate with any state or federal agency investigating terrorism.
Critics said it would call into question a 1987 state law that bars local police from aiding enforcement of federal immigration laws. The functions of the old Immigration and Naturalization Service have been split within the new Department of Homeland Security.
“It is a known fact that if immigrant victims of crimes feel that the INS will be involved or called, then crimes will go unreported and immigrants will not feel safe giving information to police to help them investigate crimes,” said Ramon Ramirez, president of the farmworkers’ union PCUN, based in Woodburn.
Minnis said he proposed the change so there would be no repeat of what happened in 2001, when Portland and several other police agencies declined to assist the FBI with interviews of Middle Eastern men.
The other would allow police to keep records of terrorism investigations — although records of a joint task force on terrorism could end up in federal hands outside state law.
George Hara, a retired Portland physician, said that could lead to political surveillance and what happened to him and thousands of others during World War II.
Keep in mind that what Minnis doesn’t want to repeat was one of the very first stumbling blocks cast before Attorney General Ashcroft’s Big Brother blitzkrieg. Remember what political surveillance looks like, why it is anathema to a free society, and why Oregon passed laws against it in the first place.
Forget putting protestors in jail for 25 years; that’s dead in the water. This is the stuff to watch out for. Keep an eye on Sen. John Minnis and his HUACkian aspirations.
I swear, it’s enough to make you think of moving to New Mexico...
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Damn, I like your style. My kind of reading. Oregon was a scary place when I was there in the late 70's, early eighties. It's one weird place and always will be. It's has one foot deeply implanted in the past and the other edges towards the present--forget the future.
Ahem, getting carried away, tired, long day, just thought I'd say fixe, wich is cool in Portuguese.
If you want to say it it's feesh.
I lived in New Mexico, too. Quite fixe.