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Mtn.man
02-13-2010, 10:47
No joke: South Carolina now requires ’subversives’ to register
By Daniel Tencer
Friday, February 5th, 2010 -- 11:49 am

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."


A PDF of the registration form can be found here http://fitsnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/SubversiveAgentForm.pdf , courtesy of FitsNews.
The law also gives subversive organizations "subject to foreign control" 30 days to register with the state after setting up shop in South Carolina.
While the intention of the law is apparently aimed at Islamic terrorists, it's unclear in the law's wording whether it can be applied to right-wing militias, some of whom have reputedly called for the overthrow of the US government. The law states that "fraternal" and "patriotic" groups are exempt from the law, but only if they don't "contemplate the overthrow of the government."
While the law is clearly redundant -- there are plenty of statutes at the state and federal level through which terrorists can be prosecuted -- it reflects a not-uncommon pattern in some states of "doubling down" against particular crimes.
For instance, South Carolina is among those states which require drug dealers to declare their illegal income, or face additional criminal penalties on top of the already established penalties for buying, possessing and selling drugs.
The South Carolina blog FitsNews describes the new law as "bureaucracy for terrorists." http://www.fitsnews.com/2010/02/04/terrorists-must-register-with-sc-secretary-of-state/
"In the long and storied history of utterly retarded legislation in South Carolina, we may have finally found the legal statute that takes the cake for sheer stupidity, which we think you’ll agree is saying something," the unsigned blog posting scathingly commented.

TFOGGER
02-13-2010, 11:10
For your $5 fee, do you get a laminated Subversive License? Can it be used as a picture ID for the 4473 when you want to buy a gun?[LOL]

jake
02-13-2010, 11:21
It brings to mind the visa waiver form you fill in when you're visiting the US. It asks if you're a terrorist. As a comedian said, the terrorist is sitting on the plane thinking "well I'm a terrorist, that's pretty bad already. But if I lie about it, that's only going to make things worse..."

Ed_S
02-13-2010, 13:20
Check out some of the questions in Part 10!

http://www.uscis.gov/files/form/n-400.pdf

ChadAmberg
02-13-2010, 13:27
This story, while not quite a hoax, isn't quite true.

They passed this law... Back in the 1950's. When is the last time you saw a 5 dollar fee for anything from the government?

It was aimed at the American Communist Party that... well, actually was attempting to overthrow the government.

sniper7
02-13-2010, 17:51
pretty amusing!

Troublco
02-13-2010, 21:26
Some things really just make you say "WTF?"

cowboykjohnson
02-14-2010, 00:16
my license came with a free tinfoil hat!

theGinsue
02-14-2010, 23:16
Now thats some funny stuff right there.