While most people were busily expressing their outrage at Trump’s latest condemnation of Alec Baldwin’s acting skills, the Senate finally found its stride and actually passed a law. It was bipartisan. It was unanimous. It was a really bad law.

The machinery of government typically works glacially slow, but the Senate didn’t miss a moment to pass the “Anti-Semitism Awareness Act of 2016” just two days after it was introduced by Sens. Bob Casey (D-PA) and Tim Scott (R-SC), and later co-sponsored by Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Michael Bennet (D-Colo.).

S-10, as it will forever be known in the Congressional record, passed by unanimous consent last Thursday, and a companion bill has been sent to the House Committee on the Judiciary.

Wait. Isn’t anti-semitism bad? Well, sure. But things that go through people’s heads are bad. People are like that. The question isn’t whether anti-semitism is bad, but whether a law about it is good. It’s not.

As noted here at Reason last week, the bill is both contradictory and constitutionally problematic. In trying to give the Department of Education (DOE) “the necessary statutory tools at their disposal to investigate anti-Jewish incidents” on college campuses, the bill attempts to conflate “unfair” political opposition to Israel with anti-Semitism. In doing so, it misses the point that things like holding Israel to “a double standard that one would not apply to any other democratic nation” and even something is repugnant as Holocaust denial are protected speech under the First Amendment.

The BDS movement, which has taken hold on many campuses and has bred a broader amorphous anti-semitism, is often concealed under a gloss of it not being about a religion, but the colonialism and apartheid of Israel toward the Palestinians.  In the scheme of college kids’ naivete and stupidity, it’s just one of many shallow beliefs that give rise to tears and hatred. So what else is new?

But the senators couldn’t bear the idea that students were thinking bad thoughts on campus and, recognizing that Title VI failed to include discrimination on the basis of religion, and that the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights desperately wanted to “address” religious discrimination (there was a Dear Colleague letter issued in 2010, which finally reached the Senate in 2016, probably because it was sent Priority Mail), they did the unthinkable: they passed a law.

The bill doesn’t make anti-Semitism (or any form of bigotry) illegal, but its intent is to “provide for the consideration of a definition of anti-Semitism for the enforcement of Federal anti-discrimination laws concerning education programs or activities,” which it justifies by invoking Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which “prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin.”

If the bill’s intent strikes you as kinda vague, that’s only because it’s vague. Hey, what do you want from a two-day bill? Substance? A well-conceived law that accomplishes its purpose? While Congress complains on the one hand that agencies are running amok with their interpretation of enabling statutes that extend them far beyond anything remotely intended by Congress, the Senate goes and enacts a bill that tells the DoE OCR, “we dunno, go fix this somehow.”

It’s that it gives the federal government the authority to investigate ideas, thoughts, and political positions as violations of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. By specifically using the broad language of a 2010 State Department memo attempting to define anti-Semitism, the Senate bill wades into thought policing.

And therein lies the problem. Indeed, not merely the problem, but a potential nightmare to the First Amendment, to the notion of thought crime and, if one actually cares about anti-semitism, to the manner in which it’s defined.  This may not have occurred to the very defensive Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the incoming non-lawyer senior minority leader of the Judiciary Committee (oy), but the kids at DoE OCR might not come up with a definition of anti-semitism that will tickle her cockles. They tend to be at the extreme of political correctness, and inclined to conflate issues of Israel’s handling of Palestinians, a fair subject of debate, with Zionism and religion. They tend to be a rather idiotic dogmatic simplistic shallow bunch.

But more to the point, these are all merely thoughts, questions, issues, and like all ideas, should be subject to discussion, debate, argument and, yes, even mean words. Some people hate Jews? Shocking. Somebody hates everything and everyone. There’s no reason why Jews should be exempt, any more than blacks, gays and unidexters.

While so many identitarian groups want desperately for laws that protect them from being subject to criticism or hate, this is exactly what the First Amendment protects and was meant to protect. If there are actions which reflect impropriety, then prohibit the conduct, but not the thought behind the conduct. We’re allowed to think. Even if that thought hurts our feelings and makes us sad.

Seemingly anticipating the arguments of pesky critics with a rudimentary understanding of the First Amendment, the very last section of the bill includes this provision:

Nothing in this Act, or an amendment made by this Act, shall be construed to diminish or infringe upon any right protected under the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.

It’s bad enough that the Senate, in a fit of unfamiliar movement, punted the hard work of defining an inherently unconstitutional concern to some bureaucrats who are more likely to conclude that Israel should be nuked out of existence, but if they think their one-line disclaimer at the end will enable this exercise to pass constitutional muster, their cluelessness knows no bounds.

Yes, anti-semitism is bad. So let’s argue about it. But keep your laws off people’s thoughts. When someone takes action, we can address the action if need be, but until then, people can think mean thoughts about us all they want. We’re tough enough to take it. And give it right back to them, even if it makes the little darlings cry.