This is the Kator Daily Podcast for Wednesday, May 19, 2010. I'm Caleb Brown.

Senators Joseph Lieberman and Scott Brown believe that U.S. citizens once designated

as terrorists by some persons or committees other than the U.S. civilian court,

that U.S. citizen should be stripped of citizenship and then tried for those alleged crimes

in military courts, where lower standards of evidence apply.

David Ritger's legal policy analyst to the Cato Institute weighs in.

In the wake of the failed Times Square bombing, Senators Joe Lieberman and Scott Brown proposed the Terrorist Expatriation Act, which purports to revoke the citizenship to expatriate, those suspected of committing material support of terrorism when it is provided to organizations on the State Department's foreign terrorist organization list.

What are the current provisions for reasons

why one might lose his or her citizenship?

Well, there are existing provisions for expatriation. There's two categories of actions that can trigger expatriation.

The first is swearing allegiance to another country in one form another and that's an administrative

hearing where the government would prove by a preponderance of the evidence which is about

51% sure is really what that means,

that you have either sworn allegiance in an oath to another country

or that you have signed up in the armed forces of another country

or in some other affirmative act intended to renounce

your association with the United States, your citizenship, and join this other country.

The other category of acts that can result in your expatriation are very serious crimes

against our national security to include treason, levying war against the United States,

fomenting an insurrection, seditious conspiracy,

very serious criminal offenses.

However, with those criminal offenses,

...