In news from Capitol Hill, the House of Representatives has passed the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act by a 404-to-six vote. The bill creates a National Commission on the Prevention of Violent Radicalization and Ideologically Based Violence. Some critics have criticized the broad language used in the bill to describe homegrown terrorism. Under the bill, any person that uses or plans to use force to advance political or social objectives would be considered a terrorist. One prominent critic of the bill has been the academic and author Ward Churchill.

Ward Churchill: “H.R. 1955, as I understand it, provides a basis for subjective interpretation of dissident speech that allows those in power to criminally penalize anything they consider to be particularly effective in terms of galvanizing an opposition that might conceivably, in some sense, disrupt or destabilize the status quo, so it’s to keep everything in that nice sanitized arena that I was just talking about where you’re actually a collateral functionary of the state by participating.”