paulitician
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- Oct 7, 2011
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An interesting but also very sad take from Bob Barr...
During the course of the now decade-old War on Terrorism, both the administration of President Barack Obama and that of his predecessor, George W. Bush, aided by a largely compliant Congress, have sought and been given or simply taken unprecedentedly broad powers of surveillance and evidence-gathering that have severely diminished the heretofore protected civil liberties of U.S. citizens. Now, thanks to action the Congress is preparing to take, the threats to those liberties are being taken to a dangerous new level.
The vehicle for this threat is the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). Lurking within this normally non-controversial piece of legislation that sets the budget for the Defense Department is a provision that would permit the U.S. military to detain civilian U.S. citizens indefinitely, even in the absence of formal charges being leveled against them.
Its congressional supporters justify this radical and dramatic departure from more than two centuries of American jurisprudence by citing the 2001 Authorization of the Use of Military Force (AUMF), which Congress passed in the days following the attacks of 9/11 and the Bush administration used as a justification to expand its surveillance of U.S. citizens.
Supporters of the NDAA are arguing that the 2001 AUMF authorizes the detention of U.S. citizens by the U.S. military based on nothing more than a claim that they might be linked to al Qaida or other, broadly designated terrorist forces.
Read more: Bob Barr | NDAA | Fifth Amendment latest victim of War on Terror | The Daily Caller
During the course of the now decade-old War on Terrorism, both the administration of President Barack Obama and that of his predecessor, George W. Bush, aided by a largely compliant Congress, have sought and been given or simply taken unprecedentedly broad powers of surveillance and evidence-gathering that have severely diminished the heretofore protected civil liberties of U.S. citizens. Now, thanks to action the Congress is preparing to take, the threats to those liberties are being taken to a dangerous new level.
The vehicle for this threat is the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). Lurking within this normally non-controversial piece of legislation that sets the budget for the Defense Department is a provision that would permit the U.S. military to detain civilian U.S. citizens indefinitely, even in the absence of formal charges being leveled against them.
Its congressional supporters justify this radical and dramatic departure from more than two centuries of American jurisprudence by citing the 2001 Authorization of the Use of Military Force (AUMF), which Congress passed in the days following the attacks of 9/11 and the Bush administration used as a justification to expand its surveillance of U.S. citizens.
Supporters of the NDAA are arguing that the 2001 AUMF authorizes the detention of U.S. citizens by the U.S. military based on nothing more than a claim that they might be linked to al Qaida or other, broadly designated terrorist forces.
Read more: Bob Barr | NDAA | Fifth Amendment latest victim of War on Terror | The Daily Caller