"Proposed legislation that would allow the government to revoke American citizenship from people suspected of allying themselves with terrorists set off a legal and political debate Thursday that scrambled some of the usual partisan lines on civil liberties issues."
Wow! This sparked an old painful nerve. Was not this the same tactic used during the Civil War and especially during reconstruction? If not all citizenship was removed parts of it were. Some states (Vermont), at least until 1918, and maybe after, held laws forbidding ex-Confederates to vote.
also...
"The act of March 3, 1865, as embodied in the Revised Statutes, provides as follows
Sec. 1996. All persons who deserted the military or naval service of the United States and did not return thereto or report themselves to a provost-marshal within 60 days after the issuance of the proclamation by the President, dated the 11th day of March, 1865, are deemed to have voluntarily relinquished and forfeited their rights of citizenship, as well as their right to become citizens; and such deserters shall be forever incapable of holding any office of trust or profit under the United States, or of exercising any tights of citizenship thereof." Was still on the books in 1918.
So it is not a new concept.
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David Upton