You can be sure this will be coming to Canada in the very near future

From: http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts01042008.html
"Thinking for Yourself is Now a Crime"

January 4, 2008
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

What was the greatest failure of 2007? President Bush's "surge" in Iraq? The
decline in the value of the US dollar? Subprime mortgages? No. The greatest
failure of 2007 was the newly sworn in Democratic Congress.

The American people's attempt in November 2006 to rein in a rogue government,
which has committed the US to costly military adventures while running
roughshod over the US Constitution, failed. Replacing Republicans with
Democrats in the House and Senate has made no difference.

The assault on the US Constitution by the Democratic Party is as determined
as the assault by the Republicans. On October 23, 2007, the House passed a bill
sponsored by California Democratic congresswoman Jane Harman
[http://www.congress.org/bio/id/52], chairwoman of a Homeland Security
subcommittee, that overturns the constitutionally guaranteed rights to free expression, association, and assembly.

The bill passed the House on a vote of 404-6. In the Senate the bill is
sponsored by Maine Republican Susan Collins
[http://www.congress.org/bio/id/283] and apparently faces no meaningful
opposition. Harman's bill is called the "Violent Radicalization and Homegrown
Terrorism Prevention Act."When HR 1955 [http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/D?
d110:4:./temp/~bd6uWO::|/bss/d110query.html|] becomes law, it will create a
commission tasked with identifying extremist people, groups, and ideas. The
commission will hold hearings around the country, taking testimony and compiling a list of dangerous people and beliefs. The bill will, in short, create massive terrorism in the United States. But the perpetrators of terrorism will not be Muslim terrorists; they will be government agents and fellow citizens.

We are beginning to see who will be the inmates of the detention centers
being built in the US by Halliburton under government contract.

Who will be on the "extremist beliefs" list? The answer is: civil
libertarians, critics of Israel, 9/11 skeptics, critics of the
administration's wars and foreign policies, critics of the administration's
use of kidnapping, rendition, torture and violation of
the Geneva Conventions, and critics of the administration's spying on
Americans. Anyone in the way of a powerful interest group--such as
environmentalists opposing politically connected developers--is also a
candidate for the list.

The "Extremist Beliefs Commission" is the mechanism for identifying Americans
who pose "a threat to domestic security" and a threat of "homegrown terrorism"
that "cannot be easily prevented through traditional federal intelligence or
law enforcement efforts."

This bill is a boon for nasty people. That SOB who stole your girlfriend,
that hussy who stole your boyfriend, the gun owner next door--just report them
to Homeland Security as holders of extreme beliefs. Homeland Security needs
suspects, so they are not going to check. Under the new regime, accusation is
evidence. Moreover, "our" elected representatives will never admit that they
voted for a bill and created an "Extremist Belief Commission" for which there
is neither need nor constitutional basis.

That boss who harasses you for coming late to work--he's a good candidate to
be reported; so is that minority employee that you can't fire for any normal
reason. So is the husband of that good-looking woman you have been unable to
seduce. Every kind of quarrel and jealousy can now be settled with a phone call
to Homeland Security.

Soon Halliburton will be building more detention centers.

Americans are so far removed from the roots of their liberty that they just
don't get it. Most Americans don't know what habeas corpus is or why it is
important to them. But they know what they want, and Jane Harman has given them
a new way to settle scores and to advance their own interests.

Even educated liberals believe that the US Constitution is a "living
document" that can be changed to mean whatever it needs to mean in order to
accommodate some new important cause, such as abortion and legal privileges for
minorities and the handicapped. Today it is the "war on terror" that the
Constitution must accommodate. Tomorrow it can be the war on whomever or whatever.

Think about it. More than six years ago the World Trade Center and Pentagon
were attacked. The US government blamed it on al Qaeda. The 9/11 Commission
Report has been subjected to criticism by a large number of qualified people--
including the commission's chairman and co-chairman.

Since 9/11 there have been no terrorist attacks in the US. The FBI has tried
to orchestrate a few, but the "terrorist plots" never got beyond talk organized
and led by FBI agents. There are no visible extremist groups other than the
neoconservatives that control the government in Washington. But somehow the
House of Representatives overwhelmingly sees a need to create a commission to
take testimony and search out extremist views (outside of Washington, of
course).

This search for extremist views comes after President Bush and the Justice
(sic) Department declared that the President can ignore habeas corpus, ignore
the Geneva Conventions, seize people without evidence, hold them indefinitely
without presenting charges, torture them until they confess to some made up
crime, and take over the government by declaring an emergency. Of course, none of these "patriotic" views are extremist.

The search for extremist views follows also the granting of contracts to
Halliburton to build detention centers in the US. No member of Congress or the
executive branch ever explained the need for the detention centers or who the
detainees would be. Of course, there is nothing extremist about building
detention centers in the US for undisclosed inmates.

Clearly the detention centers are not meant to just stand there empty. Thanks
to 2007's greatest failure--the Democratic Congress--there is to be
an "Extremist Beliefs Commission" to secure inmates for Bush's detention
centers.

President Bush promises us that the wars he has launched will cause
the "untamed fire of freedom" to "reach the darkest corners of our world."
Meanwhile in America the fire of freedom has not only been tamed but also is
being extinguished.

The light of liberty has gone out in the United States.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan
administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial
page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny
of Good Intentions. He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com