Glad to finally see the text of the proposal.
Few thoughts;
-It certainly appears to be two-parts poison pill, one-part promised-panacea. I still think Cornyn is an idiot for playing with fire this way; it's the same sour drink Feinstein is mixing but with a jigger of strychnine...which somehow still strikes me as a stupid thing to offer someone in the first place.
-Poison Pill #1 is the notification of the entire Chain 'o Command everytime one of --what're we up to now, like 2.5 million, plus a zillion more false positives with similar names?-- people tries to buy a gun. It'll be ignored every single time
-Poison Pill #2 is the high priority given to these hearings. Most likely, the intent is that they would be foregone for the sake of judicial sanity, but I'll bet in practice they would simply become rubber-stamp kangaroo courts
-The opportunity to confront your accusers (or rather, representatives of the organization who received a summary of another organization's secret intelligence dossier composed most likely of inadmissible evidence) sounds good in theory, but three days is not enough time for the defense to build a case, or even to get to a federal court house on the other side of the country that isn't bogged down with these stupid things. Considering Uncle Sam has a detailed map of your lower intestine and entire life's activities in your dossier by the time we even get to this point, three days is an awful short period to make your case. Defense discovery is made impossible (as though the secret evidence would even be available for discovery; once again proving this whole Watch List system is incompatible with Due Process)
-The one good point of the list #4 is that the three day period seems to be intended to force the feds to "**** or get off the pot" as the saying goes, and be ready to bring charges the minute they put a name on the Watch List. Sadly, the threshold of evidence required to bring charges is wholly incompatible with what the Watch List is intended to do, which is to slowly collect and compile circumstantial evidence from inadmissible sources to ultimately build sound cases from what any decent judge would toss out as frivolous paper-thin charges, otherwise.
-Number five would be a great way of trapping the Director into a tedious life of actually validating & defending their terrorist accusations, but there is no way to force that official to undertake the project themselves. It would be passed off to an underline, with very low expectations and priority.
Loud and glaring is the fact that none of these explicitly requires any form of formal Due Process to get on the list in the first place, even though the consequences kick in immediately (gun sales, background checks, police encounters, surveillance, etc.). There's a reason judges are required to sign off on search warrants, and it's because there is no justification for enforcement to go a-snoopin' without oversight. The Watch List is basically a set of names (ideally, individuals) who are fair game for whatever digital or physical 'stake out' the feds feel they can get away with. "Increased scrutiny" they call it (so is a wiretap). The addition of a procedure to quickly engage a system of relief is a welcome change, as is the addition of several checks on enforcement that would seem to encourage them to tailor their 'listing' of folks judiciously.
However, it's still all after-the-fact relief, and therefore not real Due Process. Also conspicuously absent, is the requirement that the accused be presented with the evidence against them; all of it, even if classified. Very noteworthy given Cornyn's important, if not pre-eminent position as congressional oversight for Intelligence. Because ALL the evidence is classified; that's why the list itself is classified. And that's why it is so difficult to get off the list.
Plaintiff-"Judge, I shouldn't be on this list, which I can only guess I'm on, since they won't show it to me but also won't let me buy a firearm (or tell me that that's why I was denied)"
Judge-"Okay, 'suspected' terrorist/sympathizer
, let me get the skinny from the folks who would know. Justice Department; what's your story on this guy?"
Defense-"We think he's very dangerous, or supports people who may be very dangerous, or lives across the street from people who may know someone who's dangerous. Also, he has a beard."
Judge-"Okay, I'm gonna sustain your position on the list and--"
Plaintiff-"Wait, wait, wait...your Honor.
You aren't gonna make them tell us why they think that, why exactly they put me on the list? They could just be making it all up--"
Defense-"That's classified citizen...and your Honor. Neither of you are cleared to view the information, you'll just have to take our word we're being Honest *nativeamerican* this time. And if that's not good enough, we have an Authentic permission slip from the secret FISA court that says we're following the rules..."
Judge-"Oooh, shiny! Well, far be it from me to overrule my faceless peers who for all I know may or may not exist; keep him on the list, it's definitely safer for everyone else that way"
Plaintiff-"...[redacted]..."
My understanding of the system as it is currently for someone petitioning to get removed from the list (except I think it's not even a judge that's involved, but bureaucrats from the same department as the defense/Justice laywers). Other than an allegedly more rapid timeline & real consequences for someone who ends up kept on the list (which at least makes real judicial review ultimately more likely), I'm not really seeing how the rubber-stamp nature of this self-serving process would be changed.
On the upside, we've got four whole years to find & promote a primary challenger to Cornyn if he pursues this idiocy.
TCB