Why packing the courts is important

The Supreme Court on Tuesday backed the Trump administration’s ability to detain immigrants with criminal records at any time and hold them indefinitely while they await deportation, even if they served time for their offense years ago.

In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court reversed the 9th Circuit’s finding that the mandatory detention requirement for certain immigrants with criminal records applies only if an immigrant is detained by officials as soon as he or she is released from jail.

  The Hill

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Newsflash!

There's not much difference between a rock thrown and a bullet fired.







You're not putting up tents in Mexico.  They'll be in the country.




The only thing that stops a bad guy with a rock is a good guy with an M4 carbine. -- Charlie Pierce

UPDATE:

Fascism is bipartisan in America

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.

[...]

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.

[...]

[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.”

[...]

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.

[...]

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.

[...]

Understanding the terrible potential consequences of this bill requires a close look at the relevant history and law.

  Jon Schwarz @ The Intercept

Continue reading.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Will Trump Erase the "Progress" of the Obama Administration?

Glen Ford (co-founder of Black Agenda Report) talks about Obama's legacy and what the Trump administration might change.

Indeed

He Can; He Can't; He Can Again

The Obama administration has won the latest battle in their fight to indefinitely detain US citizens and foreigners suspected of being affiliated with terrorists under the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012.

[...]

[A] group of journalists and human rights activists [filed] a federal lawsuit last year, which contested the constitutionality of Section 1021, the particular provision that provides for such broad power.

A federal judge sided with the plaintiffs.

[...]

On Wednesday this week, an appeals court in New York ruled in favor of the government and once again allowed the White House to legally indefinitely detain persons that fit in the category of enemy combatants or merely provide them with support.

[...]

Now with this week’s appellate decision, plaintiffs intend on taking their case to the Supreme Court.

  RT

Yeah, good luck with THAT.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Looks Good in Headlines

The U.S. Senate approved an amendment on Thursday that strips a controversial provision from the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act that allows the “indefinite detention” of American citizens within the U.S. by the military.

The amendment passed by a vote of 67 to 29. All but four of the Senators who voted against civilian trials for Americans were Republicans. Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WV), Ben Nelson (D-NE) and Mark Pryor (D-AR) crossed over to oppose the amendment, and they were joined by Joe Lieberman (I-CT).

The amendment reads: “An authorization to use military force, a declaration of war, or any similar authority shall not authorize the detention without charge or trial of a citizen or lawful permanent resident of the United States apprehended in the United States, unless an Act of Congress expressly authorizes such detention.”

  Raw Story

Ah, the loophole.

A similar amendment put forward by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) in 2011 failed to clear the Senate by a vote of 45 to 55. In that vote, 11 Democrats crossed over to oppose civilian trials for American citizens.

Leaving us to ponder what changed. Not that many Senate seats changed hands. Changes of heart? Conscience? Money? Favors? Or just the erratic flight of unprincipled men (and women: Claire McCaskill, Mary Landrieu and Debbie Stabenow) chasing a shiny object?   Perhaps it was the loophole.  Was that in the 2011 proposal?  If you don't know, that's more work for me, you realize?  I understood it to allow the Supreme Court to make the decision, not Congress.  I could be wrong.  So you might want to try to figure that one out yourself if you don't already have a good understanding of the bullshit as it was thrown back then.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

The 2011 Feinstein proposal Nays:

What's Wrong With Obama Having Extrajudicial, Extralegal Executive Powers?

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).

[…]

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

You don't hear too much from Conseratives complaining about having extra powers awarded the executive branch, not even the one where the President can kill anyone he wants, whenever he wants, wherever he wants, do you? That's not something they're against. That's not one of their complaints about Barack Obama.

You do, however, hear Liberals who are frightened at what Obama has done in his four short years in the office trying to convince other liberals that, Houston, we have a problem here, using the argument that, while Mr. Good Guy may not use those powers for evil, a future (read: Republican) president might. And we sure don't want the bad guys to have that kind of power.

Now, here's why I think that is a shabby argument and shouldn't be used: 1) We already know that Mr. Good Guy has used those powers; 2) What makes us think that, given another four years, Mr. Good Guy might not take his awesome unprecedented executive powers and, increasing them a little more, fix himself permanently at the head of the government? "I mean, you don't want some future bad guy up here with these powers, do you?" he could ask. And, 3) Well, 1) and 2). So please drop the "what-about-a-future-Republican-president?" argument, because if that's the only reasoning your liberal friends can muster, we're doomed.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Plugging Holes and Buying Time

U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest in Manhattan, an Obama appointee, ruled on Wednesday that Section 1021 of the [National Defense Authorization Act] likely violated due process rights guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment and free press rights guaranteed by the First Amendment.

A group of journalists and activists had filed a lawsuit against President Barack Obama, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and a slew of lawmakers in January.

[...]

Lawyers representing the government had argued that the law merely restated the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), a law that allowed the President to “use all necessary and appropriate force” against those who had perpetrated the September 11 terrorist attacks. But Forrest noted that the AUMF was “tied directly and only to those involved in the events of 9/11,” while Section 1021 was much less specific.

Forrest said the issue could be resolved if Congress adds definitional language to the statute.

“Ever since the law has come out, and because the law is so amorphous, the problem is you’re not sure what you can say, what you can do and what context you can have,” [journalist Chris] Hedges told the Associated Press.

  Raw Story

I think that's the point.

UPDATE:  summary breakdown of the case and ruling
Good article. Snippets:

Significantly, the court here repeatedly told the DOJ that it could preclude standing for the plaintiffs if they were willing to state clearly that none of the journalistic and free speech conduct that the plaintiffs engage in could subject them to indefinite detention. But the Government refused to make any such representation.

The Government was unable to define precisely what ”direct” or “substantial” “support” means. . . .Thus, an individual could run the risk of substantially supporting or directly supporting an associated force without even being aware that he or she was doing so.

Unable.  Or unwilling.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Repeal NDAA

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).

[...]

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.

[...]

Hundreds of non-citizens have been detained at Guantanamo over the past decade, of whom 171 remain, all but five without formal charge.

[...]

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

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.

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.

[...]

“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.”

[...]

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.

[...]

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.

Much to our national shame.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Constitutional Lawyer & Professor JT Discusses the Latest Obama Grab for Power

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.

[...]

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.

[...]

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.

[...]

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

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Additional from Constitutional Scholar and Civil Rights attorney Glenn Greenwald:

Check!

Montana citizens have decided to try another approach given the non-responsive attitude of our leaders — they are moving to remove their two Senators from office over their votes in favor of indefinite detention powers.

  Jonathan Turley

Now you’re talking.

Montana is one of nine states with recall laws. The other states are Arizona, Colorado, Louisiana, Michigan, Nevada, North Dakota, Oregon, and Wisconsin.

So, get with the program, you other guys.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Barry and the Bill

Section 1021 [ of the defense bill codifying indefinite detention...] contains a disclaimer regarding an intention to expand detention powers for U.S. citizens, but does so only for the powers vested by that specific section. More important, the exclusion appears to extend only to U.S. citizens “captured or arrested in the United States” — meaning that the powers of indefinite detention vested by that section apply to U.S. citizens captured anywhere abroad (there is some grammatical vagueness on this point, but at the very least, there is a viable argument that the detention power in this section applies to U.S. citizens captured abroad).

[...]

[Section 1022 (a)] not only authorizes, but requires (absent a Presidential waiver), that [covered persons] be held “in military custody pending disposition under the law of war.”

[...]

[It] does not contain the broad disclaimer regarding U.S. citizens that 1021 contains. Instead, it simply says that the requirement of military detention does not apply to U.S. citizens, but it does not exclude U.S. citizens from the authority, the option, to hold them in military custody.

It wouldn’t take much for a room full of lawyers (which includes the House on the Hill) to see the vagueness and (intentional) loophole in that.

[The] Obama administration already argues that the original 2001 AUMF authorizes them to act against U.S. citizens (obviously, if they believe they have the power to target U.S. citizens for assassination, then they believe they have the power to detain U.S. citizens as enemy combatants).

[...]

The proof that this bill does not expressly exempt U.S. citizens or those captured on U.S. soil is that amendments offered by Sen. Feinstein providing expressly for those exemptions were rejected.

So there will be no veto. Obama needs this bill passed into law so that his lawyers don’t have to waste time defending what he’s already doing; so that it’s no longer something they have to argue – it’s a law in black and white for all to see.

In this fashion, the president can do whatever the hell he wants and get the law to cover it later. Pretty neat trick. He’s not above the law. He is the law.

[F]ormer White House counsel Greg Craig assured The New Yorker‘s Jane Mayer back in February, 2009 that it’s “hard to imagine Barack Obama as the first President of the United States to introduce a preventive-detention law.”

Apparently it wasn’t hard for Barack Obama to imagine it.

President George W. Bush [claimed] that his office had the inherent power to detain anyone he chose, for as long as he chose, without a trial; to authorize the torture of prisoners; and to spy on Americans without a warrant. President Obama came into office pledging his dedication to the rule of law and to reversing the Bush-era policies.

[...]

This week, he is poised to sign into law terrible new measures that will make indefinite detention and military trials a permanent part of American law.

The measures, contained in the annual military budget bill, will strip the F.B.I., federal prosecutors and federal courts of all or most of their power to arrest and prosecute terrorists and hand it off to the military, which has made clear that it doesn’t want the job. The legislation could also give future presidents the authority to throw American citizens into prison for life without charges or a trial.

  NYT Editorial

Future presidents?

This is a complete political cave-in, one that reinforces the impression of a fumbling presidency.

[...]

Mr. Obama, his spokesman said, is prepared to sign this law because it allows the executive to grant a waiver for a particular prisoner to be brought to trial in a civilian court. But the legislation’s ban on spending any money for civilian trials for any accused terrorist would make that waiver largely meaningless.

It’s Obama telling us once again what a good man he is. See how he demanded a provision that would allow him to commute someone’s military detention into a civil case? I don’t know that this is a cave-in (in fact I’m no longer certain any of Obama’s cave-ins are actually cave-ins), rather than a way to get what he wants while pretending to be “the good guy.” It could be simply a cave-in, but I have more of the sense that President #Compromise has been eager to gain and maintain executive power from day one in the White House. Whether he actually sees himself as the good king who needs that power to do good, I couldn’t say. But I’m not feeling it. To accept that, you’d have to believe that he also thinks Goldman Sachs is a benevolent force for good.

Or maybe Barry is the real life Manchurian Candidate.

Or maybe he’s had a plan all along.

[Chicago, 2006:] On November 3, 2004, the day after he was elected to the U.S. Senate with a record 70 percent of the Illinois vote, Barack Obama declared, "I can unequivocally say I will not be running for national office" in 2008. Sitting for an interview late last year in his Senate office on the 39th floor of the Loop's Kluczynski Federal Building, Obama pledges the same thing: his "game plan" on taking office, he says, included "not going national but staying focused on being an Illinois senator."

[...]

Obama has become a more or less conventional blue-state Democrat who often defers to party elders. In this posture, whatever his denials, he looks like a politician with ambitions for higher office.

[...]

Obama's fans are aware that he has what the trade calls a "leadership PAC," a personal political action committee set up to give money to other politicians, thereby earning their loyalty. Obama's PAC, Hopefund, also launched a "Yes We Can" training seminar for young campaign workers in January with another session scheduled for June. Thus, Obama is building up a nationwide network of donors and workers-the kind of thing that people do when they want to lay the groundwork for a presidential campaign.

[...]

In an appearance on Meet the Press in late January, Obama again vigorously denied he had plans to run.

[...]

Obama seems to be seeking a moderate record in the Senate. "He is making alliances with people like Sam Brownback and Tom Coburn," Republican senators from Kansas and Oklahoma, respectively, Ornstein observes.

[...]

"A couple of things help me maintain some perspective," Obama says. "My political success comes relatively late, although I'm young for a senator. . . . Politics is fickle and dependent on a lot of things that have nothing to do with the merits of the candidate."

  Chicago Magazine

Indeed.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Detention Bill Specifics

It simply cannot be any clearer within the confines of the English language that this bill codifies the power of indefinite detention. It expressly empowers the President — with regard to anyone accused of the acts in section (b) – to detain them “without trial until the end of the hostilities.” That is the very definition of “indefinite detention,” and the statute could not be clearer that it vests this power.

[...]

Indeed, as the ACLU and HRW both pointed out, it’s the first time such powers are being codified in a statute since the McCarthy era Internal Security Act of 1950.

[...]

Under the clear language of the 2001 AUMF, the President’s authorization to use force was explicitly confined to those who (a) helped perpetrate the 9/11 attack or (b) harbored the perpetrators. That’s it. Now look at how much broader the NDAA is with regard to who can be targeted:

  Glenn Greenwald

That’s how the Obama administration justifies its ongoing bombing of Yemen and Somalia and its killing of people based on the claim that they support groups that did not even exist at the time of 9/11 [...] But this is the first time that Congress has codified that wildly expanded definition of the Enemy in the War on Terror.

Greenwald doesn't highlight what looks like a very importantly broad and vague phrase in the bill:  "any person who has committed a belligerent act."  Even if your attorney can argue that the belligerent act does not include sitting in Occupy Wall Street protests, but must be linked to aiding "such enemy forces,"  we have heard our "leaders" innumerable times accuse even each other of giving "comfort" and "aid" to the enemy by mere speech or thought.

Joe McCarthy is dancing in Hell.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

What Civil Liberties?

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.

[...]

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

We need no proof.

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.

Ours is not to reason why.

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.

Ever so much better. The stripping of human rights is no bother, but we cannot permit the executive branch to be hobbled by laws.

[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'".

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.

Fools.

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.

In a word, yes.  Another blind fool.

Unmanned aircraft from an Air Force base in North Dakota help local police with surveillance

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

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

And then there's this near Houston...


...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Glad We Got That Straightened Out

Barack Obama has abandoned a commitment to veto a new security law that allows the military to indefinitely detain without trial American terrorism suspects arrested on US soil who could then be shipped to Guantánamo Bay.

[...]

Human Rights Watch said that by signing the bill Obama would go down in history as the president who enshrined indefinite detention without trial in US law.

[...]

In fact, the heads of several security agencies, including the FBI, CIA, the director of national intelligence and the attorney general objected to the legislation. The Pentagon also said it was against the bill.

[...]

The legislation's supporters in Congress say it simply codifies existing practice, such as the indefinite detention of alleged terrorists at Guantánamo Bay. But the law's critics describe it as a draconian piece of legislation that extends the reach of detention without trial to include US citizens arrested in their own country.

"It's something so radical that it would have been considered crazy had it been pushed by the Bush administration," said Tom Malinowski of Human Rights Watch. "It establishes precisely the kind of system that the United States has consistently urged other countries not to adopt. At a time when the United States is urging Egypt, for example, to scrap its emergency law and military courts, this is not consistent."

  

Consistent? You want us to now be consistent? Feh.

The Senate is expected to give final approval to the bill before the end of the week. It will then go to the president, who previously said he would block the legislation not on moral grounds but because it would "cause confusion" in the intelligence community and encroached on his own powers.

God forbid.

Malinowski said "vague language" was deliberately included in the bill in order to get it passed.

[...]

[On] Wednesday the White House said Obama had lifted the threat of a veto after changes to the law giving the president greater discretion to prevent individuals from being handed to the military.

So that’s okay then.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.