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Subversive Groups Must Now Register In South Carolina
Hugh Pickens writes "The Raw Story reports that terrorists who want to overthrow the United States government must now register with South Carolina's Secretary of State and declare their intentions — or face a $25,000 fine and up to 10 years in prison. The 'Subversive Activities Registration Act' passed last year in South Carolina and now officially on the books states that 'every member of a subversive organization, or an organization subject to foreign control, every foreign agent and every person who advocates, teaches, advises or practices the duty, necessity or propriety of controlling, conducting, seizing or overthrowing the government of the United States ... shall register with the Secretary of State.'"
Sounds like an end-run around the First Amendment. The legislators probably realized that an outright ban on such groups would amount to prior restraint of free speech, so they figured they could achieve essentially the same effect by attempting to regulate your right to free speech, knowing that no sane person (or group) would willingly put themselves under the government's microscope. This is straight out of the playbook of J. Edgar Hoover. I am not a lawyer.
Obviously such an abuse would not hold up in a court for a moment, but it could sure as hell be used to intimidate people until it's struck down.
I would prefer a constitutional amendment that goes something like this:
Any law which isn't enforced and has no public record of ever having been enforced for a certain period of time, say 20 years or perhaps less, that the law in question simply is null and void.
A constitutional provision is one thing, such as procedures for impeachment or something that is rarely invoked for a good reason, but for laws that impact ordinary citizens, a failure to even enforce these laws (such as the anti-sodomy laws and co-habitation/fornication laws) ought to be simply declared obsolete due to lack of enforcement.
A token enforcement merely to keep the law on the books would not be considered acceptable. A pattern of widespread enforcement of such a law would have to be demonstrated for it to be considered valid under such a provision.
In this particular case with the terrorist registration law, I have my doubts that such a law would ever be proven to be enforced and its only purpose is to expand and exaggerate sentences in an effort to stifle free speech. Simply asking a state officer to testify in court about how many people actually engaged in registration would be sufficient in this case to show non-enforcement of such a law.
Too bad that such a provision or legal concept is not typically a part of common law.
I'd rather just place a time limit on all laws after which they would need to be renewed or become null and void. The period would range between 2-25 laws based on what majority (which ever house was less) it passed with (say 50-60 = 5, 60-70 = 10, 70-80 = 20, 80+ = 25). All new laws would be 5 year regardless of the majority (to prevent panic laws like Patriot Act from starting with 25 years). All existing laws would start with whatever period they should have based on the scale (exempt from 5 year mandatory first period). A law could only be renewed in the year it was due for renewal (to avoid parties from passing pet laws when they had control).