Received this email yesterday. Now, being a fine upstanding citizen living in SC, and belonging to a political party, I will be registering posthaste! Oh, could you loan me $5.00??
South Carolina’s Brilliant Idea
Posted on: February 10, 2010 9:30 AM, by Ed Brayton
Sometimes I have to wonder what’s in the water down in South Carolina. They’ve now passed a law requiring subversives to register with the government. Seriously http://rawstory.com/2010/02/south-carolinas-subversive-activities-reg istration-act-force/.
Five-dollar registration fee for persons planning to overthrow US government
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 state’s “Subversive Activities Registration Act,” passed last year 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.”
There’s even a $5 filing fee.
By “subversive organization,” the law means “every corporation, society, association, camp, group, bund, political party, assembly, body or organization, composed of two or more persons, which directly or indirectly advocates, advises, teaches or practices the duty, necessity or propriety of controlling, conducting, seizing or overthrowing the government of the United States [or] of this State.”
Great idea. Next they should have a registry for rapists and murderers. And stock up on lots of those registration forms.
I wonder if the group Christian Exodus http://christianexodus.org/ is included in this? They’ve designated South Carolina as the state for the wingnuttiest of the wingnuts to move to, take over and secede from the union to set up a theocracy. Hell, they just had a get together in Charleston.
Comments
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Notice this requires registration of “every member of a subversive organization, or an organization subject to foreign control….”
“Or.” Not “and.”
Wouldn’t that require every Catholic priest and nun to register under the act, as a member of an “organization subject to foreign control”?
Posted by: flatlander100 | February 10, 2010 9:46 AM
Wouldn’t every registered member of every political party in existence in that state need to file? Is there a single party that doesn’t exist for the purpose of getting its members in to positions where they can control or conduct government?
Posted by: Abby Normal | February 10, 2010 9:50 AM
Wait – people who advocate the necessity of conducting government are subversive now?
Posted by: Dunc | February 10, 2010 9:52 AM
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If memory serves, back in the 1850s there was an anti-Catholic theory (one amongst many) that held that the Jesuits were storing weapons in caves underneath a certain American city and planned to seize control and let the Pope move there and relocate the Vatican (to escape Italian politics post-1848). (Samuel Morse’s father was one of the believers, I think) The city was…Charleston. Maybe old fears in SC die hard…
Posted by: DesertHedgehog | February 10, 2010 10:00 AM
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