Continue reading.The fiscal year 2012 NDAA included provisions that appeared to both codify and expand a power the executive branch had previously claimed to possess — namely, the power to hold individuals, including U.S. citizens, in military detention indefinitely — based on the Authorization to Use Military Force passed by Congress three days after 9/11.
The New York Times warned that the bill could “give future presidents the authority to throw American citizens into prison for life without charges or a trial.” Not surprisingly, Obama’s decision generated enormous outcry across the political spectrum, from Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, on the right to Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., on the left.
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In theory, the NDAA’s provisions only apply to someone involved with the 9/11 attacks or who “substantially supported al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces.”
But now, incredibly enough, a bipartisan group of six lawmakers, led by Sens. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., and Tim Kaine, D-Va., is proposing a new AUMF that would greatly expand who the president can place in indefinite military detention, all in the name of restricting presidential power. If the Corker-Kaine bill becomes law as currently written, any president, including Donald Trump, could plausibly claim extraordinarily broad power to order the military to imprison any U.S. citizen, captured in America or not, and hold them without charges essentially forever.
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[T]hanks to a combination of sloppy drafting and clear reluctance to take the executive branch head-on, Corker and Kaine’s proposed AUMF could [hand] genuinely tyrannical powers over to the president. Christopher Anders of the ACLU characterizes the bill as “a legislative dumpster fire.”
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It was bad enough with the 2001 AUMF, when U.S. citizens could be imprisoned forever if they had some connection to 9/11. The NDAA made it worse by expanding this to any connection to Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and “associated forces.” But the Corker-Kaine AUMF would give the president the power to seize anyone on earth, including Americans, just by sending a piece of paper to Congress asserting that a person or organization is associated with an already-named terrorist group. And like the 2001 AUMF and the NDAA before it, the Corker-Kaine AUMF does not prohibit the executive branch from using the military to apprehend and detain Americans in the U.S. itself.
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Kaine’s office protests that the new AUMF would encourage congressional debate about the president’s detention authorities. But it’s difficult to imagine this happening in any significant way, given the fact that it’s taken Congress 17 years to get around even to considering the problems with the 2001 AUMF.
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Understanding the terrible potential consequences of this bill requires a close look at the relevant history and law.
Jon Schwarz @ The Intercept
I sometimes think Judge Forrest is the only thing standing between us and totalitarian government.A New York federal judge shot down part of a controversial anti-terror law Wednesday that journalists and scholars worry could see them locked up indefinitely for speaking their minds.
Judge Katherine Forrest issued a ruling that permanently blocked a section of the National Defense Authorization Act signed by President Barack Obama at the end of last year authorizing the detention of US citizens accused of supporting terror groups.
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The section of the law, signed by Obama on New Year’s Eve, allows the US military to detain anyone accused of supporting the Taliban or Al-Qaeda until “the end of hostilities.”
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The suit was brought by activists, including former New York Times journalist Chris Hedges and outspoken academic Noam Chomsky, who said the law was vague and could be used to curtail reporters’ and other civilian citizens’ right to free speech guaranteed under the US Constitution’s First Amendment.
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In her ruling, Forrest said the plaintiffs did “present evidence that First Amendment rights have already been harmed and will be harmed by the prospect of (the law) being enforced.
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The court “permanently” halts enforcement of that part of the law after it issued a preliminary injunction against it in May, Forrest said, calling on Congress to reexamine the measure.
Raw Story
In May, following a March hearing, Judge Katherine Forrest issued an injunction against [the National Defense Authorization Act]; this week, in a final hearing in New York City, US government lawyers essentially asserted even more extreme powers - the power to entirely disregard the judge and the law. Indeed, on Monday, August 6, Obama's lawyers filed an appeal to the injunction - a profoundly important development that as of this writing has been scarcely reported.
In the March hearing, the US lawyers had confirmed that yes, the NDAA does give the president the power to lock up people like journalist Chris Hedges and peaceful activists like myself and other plaintiffs. Government attorneys have stated on record that even war correspondents could be locked up indefinitely under the NDAA. Judge Katherine Forrest had ruled for a temporary injunction against an unconstitutional provision in this law - after government attorneys refused to provide assurances to the court that plaintiffs and others would not be indefinitely detained for engaging in first amendment activities. Twice the government has refused to define what it means to be an "associated force", and it claimed the right to refrain from offering any clear definition of this term, or clear boundaries of power under this law. This past week's hearing was even more terrifying: incredibly, in this hearing, Obama's attorneys refused to assure the court, when questioned, that the NDAA's provision - one that permits reporters and others who have not committed crimes to be detained without trial - has not been applied by the US government anywhere in the world - after Judge Forrest's injunction. In other words, they were saying to a US judge that they could not or would not state whether Obama's government had complied with the legal injunction that she had lain down before them.
alJazeera
The indefinite detention section of the National Defense Authorization Act, passed by Congress in 2011, says that the U.S. can hold a suspect "without trial, until the end of the hostilities." It was met with a mighty signing statement by President Obama where he pledged to never use his superpower for evil and that no Americans would be treated like filthy foreigners (except, you know, for the whole blowing them up with missiles overseas).
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You can't ignore this shit. You just look like a fool if you do. Again, this is not just an extension of the very things we took to the streets to protest George W. Bush for, it's an expansion. And it's fucking scary shit. Because instead of reducing the power of the imperial president, an idea he criticized while running, Obama has embraced it. And, no matter how much you trust him, Obama ain't gonna be there some day and all these powers and laws will be.
Rude Pundit
Yes, and why is that? Frankly, I think that many, if not most, Americans would be happy to have laws allowing differences between races if they could get away with it. And leaving aside the bizarre fact that the United States has power over foreign nationals not even on American soil (in Cuba of all places – a country we have the strictest of sanctions and animosity against and regularly vilify as a super enemy), the problem lies in why it’s okay to discriminate by nationality and not by race.I am of two minds about the Due Process Guarantee Act of 2011, a bill drafted in response to the detention provisions of the recently-enacted National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).
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The draft law, introduced in the Senate on December 15 and in the House the following day, says that a congressional authorization for the use of military force does not allow the indefinite detention of citizens or lawful permanent residents arrested in the US, unless Congress explicitly provides for such detention. In other words, it would establish a clear statement rule that would offer citizens and resident non-citizens in the US default protection against detention without charge.
Such a rule, had it existed in 2002, would have barred the Bush administration from holding US citizen Jose Padilla for three-and-a-half years without charge, an unnecessary and abusive measure. But it would do nothing to solve the country’s most urgent and glaring detention problem: the indefinite detention of non-resident aliens.
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Hundreds of non-citizens have been detained at Guantanamo over the past decade, of whom 171 remain, all but five without formal charge.
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Most Americans would, I think, be appalled if protection against indefinite detention were allocated along explicit racial or ethnic lines. A law saying that African-Americans could be held without charge, but white people could not, would be condemned as unconstitutional by the man on the street. Yet such distinctions, when they trace the bounds of citizenship, are somehow viewed as natural.
Counterpunch
Much to our national shame.The UK’s highest court, faced with a British indefinite-detention law in 2004, struck the law down precisely because it discriminated on the grounds of citizenship.
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“If the threat presented to the security of the United Kingdom by UK nationals suspected of being Al-Qaeda terrorists or their supporters could be addressed without infringing their right to personal liberty,” said one of the Law Lords hearing the case, “it is not shown why similar measures could not adequately address the threat presented by foreign nationals.”
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The reform that makes real sense is not a limited revision of the NDAA to protect Americans, but a principled initiative that bans detention without charge. A bill introduced by Representative Ron Paul, which would repeal one of the NDAA’s key detention provisions, would be a step in that direction, but, with only three cosponsors, the bill has little chance of passing.
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Prospects for meaningful change are slim. In the meantime, unbeknownst to the US public, the relatives of detainees held at Guantanamo hold demonstrations outside of the US Embassy in Kuwait. There is abundant outrage and concern over the indefinite detention of people at Guantanamo, it just isn’t shared here.
[Re: NDAA] Once a group is deemed to be a terrorist organization, whether it is a Palestinian charity or an element of the Uighur independence movement, the military can under this bill pick up a U.S. citizen who supported charities associated with the group or unwittingly sent money or medical supplies to front groups.
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I spent many years in countries where the military had the power to arrest and detain citizens without charge. I have been in some of these jails. I have friends and colleagues who have “disappeared” into military gulags. I know the consequences of granting sweeping and unrestricted policing power to the armed forces of any nation. And while my battle may be quixotic, it is one that has to be fought if we are to have any hope of pulling this country back from corporate fascism.
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I met regularly with leaders of Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza. I used to visit Palestine Liberation Organization leaders, including Yasser Arafat and Abu Jihad, in Tunis when they were branded international terrorists. I have spent time with the Revolutionary Guard in Iran and was in northern Iraq and southeastern Turkey with fighters from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party. All these entities were or are labeled as terrorist organizations by the U.S. government. What would this bill have meant if it had been in place when I and other Americans traveled in the 1980s with armed units of the Sandinistas in Nicaragua or the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front guerrillas in El Salvador? What would it have meant for those of us who were with the southern insurgents during the civil war in Yemen or the rebels in the southern Sudan? I have had dinner more times than I can count with people whom this country brands as terrorists. But that does not make me one.
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But I suspect the real purpose of this bill is to thwart internal, domestic movements that threaten the corporate state. The definition of a terrorist is already so amorphous under the Patriot Act that there are probably a few million Americans who qualify to be investigated if not locked up.
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The supine and gutless Democratic Party, which would have feigned outrage if George W. Bush had put this into law, appears willing, once again, to grant Obama a pass. But I won’t. What he has done is unforgivable, unconstitutional and exceedingly dangerous.
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Attorneys Carl J. Mayer and Bruce I. Afran filed a complaint Friday in the Southern U.S. District Court in New York City on my behalf as a plaintiff against Barack Obama and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta to challenge the legality of the Authorization for Use of Military Force as embedded in the latest version of the National Defense Authorization Act, signed by the president Dec. 31.
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I suspect it passed because the corporations, seeing the unrest in the streets, knowing that things are about to get much worse, worrying that the Occupy movement will expand, do not trust the police to protect them. They want to be able to call in the Army. And now they can.
Chris Hedges
| The Colbert Report | Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| The Word - Catch 2012 | ||||
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...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.With Americans distracted with drinking and celebrating, Obama signed one of the greatest rollbacks of civil liberties in the history of our country . . . and citizens partied only blissfully into the New Year.
Ironically, in addition to breaking his promise not to sign the law, Obama broke his promise on signing statements and attached a statement that he really does not want to detain citizens indefinitely.
Obama insisted that he signed the bill simply to keep funding for the troops. It was a continuation of the dishonest treatment of the issue by the White House since the law first came to light. As discussed earlier, the White House told citizens that the President would not sign the NDAA because of the provision. That spin ended after sponsor Sen. Carl Levin (D., Mich.) went to the floor and disclosed that it was the White House and insisted that there be no exception for citizens in the indefinite detention provision.
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The latest claim is even more insulting. You do not “support our troops” by denying the principles for which they are fighting. They are not fighting to consolidate authoritarian powers in the President. The “American way of life” is defined by our Constitution and specifically the Bill of Rights. Moreover, the insistence that you do not intend to use authoritarian powers does not alter the fact that you just signed an authoritarian measure. It is not the use but the right to use such powers that defines authoritarian systems.
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On the NDAA, reporters continue to mouth the claim that this law only codifies what is already the law. That is not true. The Administration has fought any challenges to indefinite detention to prevent a true court review. Moreover, most experts agree that such indefinite detention of citizens violates the Constitution.
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Obama could have refused to sign the bill and the Congress would have rushed to fund the troops. Instead, as confirmed by Sen. Levin, the White House conducted a misinformation campaign to secure this power while portraying Obama as some type of reluctant absolute ruler, or as Obama maintains a reluctant president with dictatorial powers.
Jonathan Turley
We need no proof.While it's known that the US has used indefinite detention of suspects in its "war on terror", Congress has voted to make the same treatment legal for US citizens apprehended within the US.
The House of Representatives passed the 2012 National Defence Authorisation Act (or NDAA) on Wednesday and Senate approved it on Thursday.
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Provisions in the bill codify an approach that allows for endless detention of US citizens and non-citizens picked up anywhere in the world. They also give the US military the option to detain US citizens suspected of participating or aiding in terrorist activities without a trial, indefinitely.
alJazeera
Ours is not to reason why.Attempts were made by several senators to strip the bill of that provision, but those attempts failed. Indeed, most of those who fought to have the provision removed from the bill - such as California's Senator Diane Feinstein and Colorado's Senator Mark Udall (both Democrats) ultimately ended up voting in favour of the bill.
Al Jazeera tried to contact nearly 30 senators from both sides of the vote (including co-sponsors senators John McCain and Carl Levin) but none seemed to be willing to talk or to answer questions about why they either voted against the provisions or, alternately, why they feel they are necessary and why the US justice system is inadequate to deal with terrorist suspects.
Ever so much better. The stripping of human rights is no bother, but we cannot permit the executive branch to be hobbled by laws.Under pressure from the White House, Congress tweaked the bill on Monday, altering it to say that the military cannot interfere with FBI and other civilian investigations and interrogations. The revisions also allow the president to sign a waiver moving a terror suspect from military to civilian prison.
They don’t. They are just headless chickens bumping into each other trying to look tough. Of course, being headless, they cannot see what the rest of the world sees – a bunch of headless chickens running around bumping into each other, which is not a very fear-inspiring vision. The executive branch, on the other hand, is only interested in maintaining and gaining power, and if the President heads the military (which he does) then he now has them as his own Republican Guard to turn loose on anyone he wants. That should be comforting to all wimpy Democratic politicians who voted for this heinous bill considering they have such a tenuous grasp on the oval office and that the "opposing party" is both ruthless and completely fucking nuts. Perhaps if they keep the presidency this time around, they’ll work on a provision in the next four years to make the president emperor for life and allow for him to appoint a successor.[T]he military is not set up for domestic law enforcement, said Hulburt, adding that she’s done briefings with members of the military who "roll their eyes and say 'I don't know, on a practical level, how they expect us to [do] this'".
In a word, yes. Another blind fool.Geneve Manatri, government relations director for Security with Human Rights at Amnesty International USA, disagrees.
"Senator Graham and people who share his point of view essentially believe that we are at war, and that that war and that battlefield extends everywhere. But taken to its logical conclusion - the idea is nonsensical. Where else are we really going to use drones? On the main street of Montreal? Or in the middle of America, are we going to chase someone down to a 7-Eleven with military force or drone," said Manatri.
A Predator Drone, the same aerial vehicle used by the CIA to track down and assassinate terrorists and militants in Pakistan and Afghanistan, was used to hunt down the Brossarts, a North Dakota family who allegedly wouldn't give back three cows and their calves that wandered onto their 3,000-acre farm this summer.
Opposing Views
And then there's this near Houston...Congress authorized the U.S. Customs and Border Protection to buy unarmed Predators in 2005, the Times said, to search for illegal immigrants and smugglers on the country's northern and southwestern borders.
MSNBC
