President Barack Obama rang in the New Year by signing the NDAA law with its provision allowing him to indefinitely detain citizens. It was a symbolic moment to say the least. 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 that 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.
The almost complete failure of the mainstream media to cover this issue is shocking. Many reporters have bought into the spin of the Obama Administration as they did the spin over torture by the Bush Administration. Even today reporters refuse to call waterboarding torture despite the long line of cases and experts defining waterboarding as torture for decades. 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.
There are also those who continue the long-standing effort to excuse Obama’s horrific record on civil liberties by either blaming others or the times. One successful myth is that there is an exception for citizens. The White House is saying that changes to the law made it unnecessary to veto the legislation. That spin is facially ridiculous. The changes were the inclusion of some meaningless rhetoric after key amendments protecting citizens were defeated. The provision merely states that nothing in the provisions could be construed to alter Americans’ legal rights. Since the Senate clearly views citizens are not just subject to indefinite detention but even execution without a trial, the change offers nothing but rhetoric to hide the harsh reality. THe Administration and Democratic members are in full spin — using language designed to obscure the authority given to the military. The exemption for American citizens from the mandatory detention requirement (section 1032) is the screening language for the next section, 1031, which offers no exemption for American citizens from the authorization to use the military to indefinitely detain people without charge or trial.
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.
Most Democratic members joined their Republican colleagues in voting for this unAmerican measure. Some Montana citizens are moving to force the removal of these members who they insist betrayed their oaths of office and their constituents. Most citizens however are continuing to treat the matter as a distraction from the holiday cheer.
For civil libertarians, the NDAA is our Mayan moment. 2012 is when the nation embraced authoritarian powers with little more than a pause between rounds of drinks.
So here is a resolution better than losing weight this year . . . make 2012 the year you regained your rights.
Here is the signing statement attached to the bill:
————-
THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
December 31, 2011
Statement by the President on H.R. 1540
Today I have signed into law H.R. 1540, the “National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012.” I have signed the Act chiefly because it authorizes funding for the defense of the United States and its interests abroad, crucial services for service members and their families, and vital national security programs that must be renewed. In hundreds of separate sections totaling over 500 pages, the Act also contains critical Administration initiatives to control the spiraling health care costs of the Department of Defense (DoD), to develop counterterrorism initiatives abroad, to build the security capacity of key partners, to modernize the force, and to boost the efficiency and effectiveness of military operations worldwide.
The fact that I support this bill as a whole does not mean I agree with everything in it. In particular, I have signed this bill despite having serious reservations with certain provisions that regulate the detention, interrogation, and prosecution of suspected terrorists. Over the last several years, my Administration has developed an effective, sustainable framework for the detention, interrogation and trial of suspected terrorists that allows us to maximize both our ability to collect intelligence and to incapacitate dangerous individuals in rapidly developing situations, and the results we have achieved are undeniable. Our success against al-Qa’ida and its affiliates and adherents has derived in significant measure from providing our counterterrorism professionals with the clarity and flexibility they need to adapt to changing circumstances and to utilize whichever authorities best protect the American people, and our accomplishments have respected the values that make our country an example for the world.
Source: ABC
DonS, My pleasure…
Blouise, You in denial? Never! It wouldn’t even occur to me.
——————————————-
“These are the times that try men’s souls: The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered.” -Thomas Paine
Thursday, January 5, 2012
Defiling the Constitution, Betraying the Founders
by Ray McGovern
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/01/05-3
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/219083.html (Dave Lindorff (Philadelphia), Don DeBar (New York), and Ray McGovern in a panel discussion of the implications of the President’s signing of the NDAA)
Thanks, anon nurse, for the link at @ 8:54.
A good read.
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/01/04/for-gop-one-party-but-three-platforms/not-your-fathers-republican-party
Tony C. writes the same feelings as I have. It is literally as if nothing Obama does matters. Yet killing a 16 year old child, torture, rendition, endless war, imprisonment without trial, failure to prosecute for war and financial crimes–this short list, even one of those actions should shock the conscience, yet the reaction of so many people is as if nothing happened. That is scary and disturbing to me. I keep wondering why these actions are acceptable to people. The only answer I get is supporters don’t want a Republican doing these types of things. But my question remains, why would you accept anyone doing these things?
Once you have accepted these actions, is there any limit to what you will give over to your leaders? Why on earth would you believe in or believe that anything a person who did these things said to you would be true? That doesn’t make sense. It is a suspension of fundamental reality to trust a person who has killed a boy for no reason or who tortures or who would imprison the innocent.
How do people come to the point where they will accept these actions? I really don’t understand this. Is it because you don’t imagine this will every happen to you or anyone you care about? By why don’t you care whether it happens to someone who is a complete stranger. It scares me that my fellow citizens don’t seem to care what is happening to strangers. That is the essence of “First they came”. More importantly, even if one is never taken, others are being taken, right now. Who are we as a people if we turn away from the suffering of others? It is as if I do not know, nor can I comprehend Obama supporters.
Tony writes and I agree with him: “Perhaps nobody else is as alarmed as I am, and everybody thinks the NDAA is not so bad, citizen assassinations are not so bad, torture is not so bad if it is kept secret, the endless war is not so bad, the warrant-less search and property seizure and pervasive eavesdropping are all not so bad. Let us just keep playing the Rs vs Ds, because it is all just low-grade entertainment and Spielberg’s next movie is far more important than who runs the country.
I think the truth is far more apocalyptic and before Obama is done the America we believed in will be nothing but irrelevant papers and stories. Oh, yoju will be free! (as long as you toe the line and watch what you say and do what you are told without question).”
Ron Paul’s Strange Bedfellows
Katha Pollitt
The Nation
January 4, 2012
http://www.thenation.com/article/165440/ron-pauls-strange-bedfellows
Excerpt:
It’s a little strange to see people who inveigh against Obama’s healthcare compromises wave away, as a detail, Paul’s opposition to any government involvement in healthcare. In Ron Paul’s America, if you weren’t prudent enough or wealthy enough to buy private insurance—and the exact policy that covers what’s ailing you now—you find a charity or die. And if civil liberties are so important, how can Paul’s progressive fans overlook his opposition to abortion and his signing of the personhood pledge, which could ban many birth control methods? Last time I checked, women were half the population (the less important half, apparently). Technically, Paul would overturn Roe and let states make their own laws regulating women’s bodies, up to and including prosecuting abortion as murder. Add in his opposition to basic civil rights law—he maintains his opposition to the 1964 Civil Rights Act and opposes restrictions on the “freedom” of business owners to refuse service to blacks—and his hostility to the federal government starts looking more and more like old-fashioned Southern-style states’ rights. No wonder they love him over at Stormfront, a white-supremacist website with neo-Nazi tendencies. In a multiple-choice poll of possible effects of a Paul presidency, the most popular answer by far was “Paul will implement reforms that increase liberty which will indirectly benefit White Nationalists.” And let’s not forget his other unsavory fan base, Christian extremists who want to execute gays, adulterers and “insubordinate children.” Paul’s many connections with the Reconstructionist movement, going back decades, are laid out on AlterNet by Adele Stan, who sees him as a faux libertarian whose real agenda is not individualism but to prevent the federal government from restraining the darker impulses at work at the state and local levels.
It’s all pretty incoherent for a man often praised as principled and consistent and profound—if states could turn themselves into a Christian theocracy, could they also turn themselves into socialist mini-republics? If they can ban contraception, can they also compel contraception? For people who see Paul as an antiwar candidate who will restore the Bill of Rights, it’s almost bad manners to bring up his opposition to just about every piece of progressive legislation passed in the last 200 years, from the Occupational Safety and Health Act and membership in the UN to Federal Deposit Insurance and requirements that undocumented immigrants be permitted treatment in ERs. But come on! This man has been a stone reactionary his entire life. Consistent? Not to harp on abortion, but an effective ban would require a level of policing that would make the war on drugs look feeble.
January 5, 2012
Canaries in the Data Mines
Civil libertarians raise alarm over America’s national surveillance network.
BY Nan Levinson
http://inthesetimes.com/article/12427/canaries_in_the_data_mines
“What I find bizarre is Obama is also a racist”
Jill,
I know he’s a fascist/communist/Islamic/Kenyan but this charge is new to me. Just how is he a racist?
.
“I think the truth is far more apocalyptic and before Obama is done the America we believed in will be nothing but irrelevant papers and stories.”
Tony,
Just what American era since the Revolution are you referring to? Damn it
Tony, I thought you knew better than that. America has never lived up to its Constitution and BoR. That’s precisely the reason we have these problems today.
“True – and as I mentioned the possibility of – Congress would stalemate many of his more drastic ideas. That is, however, not a guarantee.”
Gene,
As far as Congress “stalemating” anything that is true, but for one very good possibility and that is if in the Obama loss, all of Congress turns Republican. Given the gyrations that Republicans have gone through to please the extreme right wing of their party. The possible control of all three branches would be a disaster of the worst consequences. Eric Cantor as Speaker of the House, Mitch McConnell/Lindsey Graham Senate Majority and pick your Republican in the WH and things would quickly get ugly, with feudal fascism moving from the likely to the inevitable.
“I am willing to suffer any pain it takes to restore the Bill of Rights and get this militarized police state under control before it becomes intractable.”
Tony,
How noble of you save for the fact that if any candidate in this race gets elected you won’t suffer any pain at all. You’ve alluded to the fact that besides being a scientist, you’re a successful businessman. If that’s the case you’re not suffering the pain of the average Americas as the safety net frays; jobs pay little and are scarce; and homes are foreclosed. Now will you suffer the pain of no health care, no Medicare and no Social Security. Why, because as you have told us you’re very successful financially.
“The pains we might suffer under Paul’s idiotic philosophy are injuries we can heal once he is gone, the loss of the Bill of Rights is a fatal wound that will not heal.”
Tony you are not part of the “we” who will suffer, by your own admission. So it shows the true humanist in you that you are willing to let millions suffer through all this, because after all Tony will be okay.
“Paul is an idiot, an Objectivist, a Free marketer, probably a racist and homophobic old man, but he calls himself a Constitutionalist FIRST, and his actions for decades have borne that out. He is a cement-head ideologue that has been blindly faithful to the Constitution at every turn. That is his value.”
The only thing Ron Paul has been blindly faithful to is his belief in creating an “objectivist” America. Don’t worry about a thing though Tony, you can stand the pain, it’s only the rest of us who can’t. I’m sure we’ll have your sympathy though.
Tony,
“I am willing to suffer any pain it takes to restore the Bill of Rights and get this militarized police state under control before it becomes intractable.”
As am I with the caveat that I’d prefer the cure not be as damaging as the condition. Would Paul forfeit the expanded powers of the unitary executive? Or would he – having the power – use it to further his more extreme agenda items? A civil libertarian without all the crazy baggage Paul carries would get my vote too.
Here’s where we differ.
“The pains we might suffer under Paul’s idiotic philosophy are injuries we can heal once he is gone, the loss of the Bill of Rights is a fatal wound that will not heal.”
I agree with the later but not with the former. Paul’s idiotic philosophy could just as easily bring the whole house down as losing the Bill of Rights. One would bring fascism, other a more militant form of fascism, but both would bring fascism with slightly different flavors of authoritarianism. The United States of Privatized Social Services versus the United States of Raytheon. It’s clear you see the dangers inherent in Paul, but I think you might be underestimating the potential scale of damage. True – and as I mentioned the possibility of – Congress would stalemate many of his more drastic ideas. That is, however, not a guarantee. What’s to keep Paul from misusing the already abused signing statements to make law by Imperial fiat like Bush and Obama before him when frustrated by Congress and/or the Courts? Not a goddamn thing at this point. We both know his Austrian School economics are ultimately antithetical to civil and human rights no matter how good his game is on trying to convince people otherwise. Paul talks an internally contradictory game between his political policy and his economic policy so I can’t trust him to be a man of his word on restoring the Rule of Law and the Bill of Rights. Even if stalemated on everything but the RoL and BoR, the alternative is a Citizen’s United funded Congress having their way on everything else for four years. Not exactly a confidence building scenario either.
“Perhaps nobody else is as alarmed as I am, and everybody thinks the NDAA is not so bad, citizen assassinations are not so bad, torture is not so bad if it is kept secret, the endless war is not so bad, the warrant-less search and property seizure and pervasive eavesdropping are all not so bad.”
I think the opposition to these items is quite clear and the dangers they represent are well appreciated in this forum.
“Let us just keep playing the Rs vs Ds, because it is all just low-grade entertainment and Spielberg’s next movie is far more important than who runs the country.”
True of many perhaps, but keep in mind on a Venn diagram that those primarily interested in entertainment and the audience of this blog have a very small overlap.
“Ron Paul may be a sledge hammer, but he is the only tool in the drawer that has any chance of derailing this train.”
Perhaps, but at what cost? And we are back to the point where we differ.
Enjoy your conference.
Tony,
“…everybody thinks the NDAA is not so bad, citizen assassinations are not so bad, torture is not so bad if it is kept secret, the endless war is not so bad, the warrant-less search and property seizure and pervasive eavesdropping are all not so bad.everybody thinks the NDAA is not so bad, citizen assassinations are not so bad, torture is not so bad if it is kept secret, the endless war is not so bad, the warrant-less search and property seizure and pervasive eavesdropping are all not so bad.”
Perhaps others are as alarmed as you–and perhaps not everybody thinks the NDAA is not so bad, citizen assassinations are not so bad, torture is not so bad if it is kept secret, the endless war is not so bad, the warrant-less search and property seizure and pervasive eavesdropping are all not so bad.
How is Paul going to work his magic? He won’t be elected president. He has about a 1% chance of being the 2012 Republican nominee. Let’s talk about reality.
“Mike,
President Ron Paul? Ron Paul and the John Birch Society
by Andrew Reinbach”
Elaine,
Thank you for that it rounds out the arguments against Paul that I’ve been making..While it’s true I’m going to vote for Obama I’ve been very clear on my criticism of the President, so I really understand the people who won’t vote for him. However, to present Ron Paul as a viable alternative is folly, given what I know of him, now bolstered by the stuff you presented.
Bron asks “Did Webb send you the same verbiage as my congressman did”
No. I posted the meat of Webb’s response upthread somewhere, and withdraw my previous surmise, though not my disappointment in Webb.
@Gene: I too find it puzzling that he doesn’t see the correlation between Objectivism and Paul’s platform.
I see it clearly, and I will also stipulate that Paul is a free market idiot, and I am in hard line opposition to it. Paul (and Objectivists) have a woefully deficient and fictional understanding of how the brain works, and humans work and respond to stimulus, hardship, opportunity, and society. I will even stipulate I think there is a high probability Paul is a racist (and I find it astonishing Mike S. dismisses the deep-rooted effects of childhood cultural indoctrination into social attitudes, I thought they were obvious.)
So I understand all of that.
Of all people, even though we have traded insults before, I would think you would understand this argument: I am willing to suffer any pain it takes to restore the Bill of Rights and get this militarized police state under control before it becomes intractable. The pains we might suffer under Paul’s idiotic philosophy are injuries we can heal once he is gone, the loss of the Bill of Rights is a fatal wound that will not heal.
And I believe (perhaps wrongly) that Paul is the only candidate that would find a way to permanently limit the power of the Presidency, including his own. I believe it would take a President to do that.
The Congress isn’t going to pass an alternative currency bill, they aren’t going to strip federal courts of jurisdiction, they aren’t going to abolish Social Security or Medicare, they aren’t going to pass racist laws. Democrats would filibuster and have a field day.
But Congress might pass laws or Amendments that REDUCE the power of the President. As Commander in Chief, he might wrestle the military and the 3000 Intelligence agencies to the ground. As the Chief Executive, he might deprioritize the war on drugs, and with the pardons he promised for all non-violent pot offenders, immediately end the destruction of young lives over smoking something less harmful (and less addictive) than drinking alcohol.
There is no puzzle, Gene. Paul is an idiot, an Objectivist, a Free marketer, probably a racist and homophobic old man, but he calls himself a Constitutionalist FIRST, and his actions for decades have borne that out. He is a cement-head ideologue that has been blindly faithful to the Constitution at every turn. That is his value.
Perhaps nobody else is as alarmed as I am, and everybody thinks the NDAA is not so bad, citizen assassinations are not so bad, torture is not so bad if it is kept secret, the endless war is not so bad, the warrant-less search and property seizure and pervasive eavesdropping are all not so bad. Let us just keep playing the Rs vs Ds, because it is all just low-grade entertainment and Spielberg’s next movie is far more important than who runs the country.
I think the truth is far more apocalyptic and before Obama is done the America we believed in will be nothing but irrelevant papers and stories. Oh, you will be free! (as long as you toe the line and watch what you say and do what you are told without question). Ron Paul may be a sledge hammer, but he is the only tool in the drawer that has any chance of derailing this train.
I have a conference to prepare for and then attend next week, I do not know when I will be able to post again. Thanks for your posts, everybody.
TC: clearly your online virtual persona needs a break. Getting out in the real world for a bit will do you good. Hope the sunlight doesn’t cause you to melt.
You said, “He is a cement-head ideologue that has been blindly faithful to the Constitution at every turn.” I certainly agree with the “cement-head” and “blind” part but his and your notion of “faithful to the constituion” was clearly not intended to include the United States Constitution.
Meanwhile, have a great presentation. Glad to hear that disability of yours in the real world has gone away.
I am not a Ron Paul fan but I doubt he is a racist where he thinks real racism comes from:
“If places of public accommodation were free to racially discriminate, how much racial discrimination would there be? In answering that question, we should acknowledge that just because a person is free to do something, it doesn’t follow that he will find it in his interest to do so. An interesting example is found in an article by Dr. Jennifer Roback titled “The Political Economy of Segregation: The Case of Segregated Streetcars,” in Journal of Economic History (1986). During the late 1800s, private streetcar companies in Augusta, Houston, Jacksonville, Mobile, Montgomery and Memphis were not segregated, but by the early 1900s, they were. Why? City ordinances forced them to segregate black and white passengers. Numerous Jim Crow laws ruled the day throughout the South, mandating segregation in public accommodations.
When one sees a law on the books, he should suspect that the law is there because not everyone would voluntarily comply with the law’s specifications. Extra-legal measures, that included violence, backed up Jim Crow laws. When white solidarity is confronted by the specter of higher profits by serving blacks, it’s likely that profits will win. Thus, Title II of the 1964 Civil Rights represented government countering government-backed Jim Crow laws.
One does not have to be a racist to recognize that the federal government has no constitutional authority to prohibit racial or any other kind of discrimination by private parties. Moreover, the true test of one’s commitment to freedom of association doesn’t come when he permits people to associate in ways he deems appropriate. It comes when he permits people to voluntarily associate in ways he deems offensive.”
Maybe that is what Paul has in mind.
“GOP Field Suddenly Frightened As Super PACs Break Out Of Lab”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/05/2012-election-new-hampshire-primary-super-pac_n_1186413.html “Super PAC Disclosure Requirements Hot Topic Of Conversation Among GOP Candidates”
Gene H:
It was just a fact I learned. Certainly not all socialists are fascists. That would be illogical.
DonS:
I just sent to my congressman in my local district.
Did Webb send you the same verbiage as my congressman did?
Iowa was Paul’s best chance to win a state, and he did not succeed. He has virtually no chance because many of the republican primaries are winner take all. I doubt that he wins one state.