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On Fox News, host Tom Shillue asserted that “it's time for the rules of war inside the boundaries of this country,” explaining, “I like freedom for me, not the bad guys.” He went on to suggest that before would-be home grown terrorists like the American-born killer in Orlando perpetrate attacks, they should be arrested on the basis of anti-American speech or attitudes and deported––to what country he did not say––even as their citizenship is revoked. As Matt Welch of Reason retorted, law enforcement can already obtain warrants and bring enormous scrutiny to bear on anyone they suspect of planning or supporting a terrorist attack. But they “cannot charge someone with pre-crime,” he said. “This is not Phillip K. Dick.”

Shillue responded that the Orlando killer said America deserved the 9/11 attack, and that the Constitution should be changed so that speech like that cost someone their citizenship and get them deported. Watch out, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson:

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Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president; Senator Dianne Feinstein; and other prominent Democrats responded to the Orlando attack by insisting that anyone placed on America’s terrorist watch list should not be allowed to buy a gun. “If you are too dangerous to get on a plane,” Clinton declared, “you are too dangerous to buy a gun in America.” The Orlando shooter was not on the watch list when he bought his gun, but had reportedly been on it in the past.

As I noted two years ago, America’s terrorist watch list is an opaque abomination. Members of the public are unaware of what actions might get them placed on the list. Individuals cannot verify whether or not they've been designated by their government as an enemy. They can't challenge their status before a neutral arbiter, or know when their status changes. The Obama administration has run a system in which watch-list standards are beyond debate, and in which individual determinations are made entirely within the executive branch, short-circuiting the American system of checks and balances. This degree of secrecy and arbitrariness is un-American, and may even prevent scrutiny of why this latest terrorist was erroneously excluded as a threat.

It is already a scandal that a list like this can prevent a person from flying, as if moving about the country is a privilege, not a right. And now, Democrats are proposing that being on a secret, due-process free list should strip people of a constitutional right.

“If the government can revoke your right to access firearms simply because it has decided to place you on a secret, notoriously inaccurate list, it could presumably restrict your other rights in a similar manner,” Mark Joseph Stern points out at Slate. “You could be forbidden from advocating for causes you believe in, or associating with like-minded activists; your right against intrusive, unreasonable searches could be suspended. And you would have no recourse: The government could simply declare that, as a name on a covert list, you are owed no due process at all.”