Tangerine Bolen
guardian.co.uk,
Time after time, Obama’s lawyers defending the NDAA’s section 1021 affirm our worst fears about its threat to our liberty
I am one of the lead plaintiffs in the civil lawsuit against the National Defense Authorization Act, which gives the president the power to hold any US citizen anywhere for as long as he wants, without charge or trial.
In a May hearing, Judge Katherine Forrest issued an injunction against it; this week, in a final hearing in New York City, US government lawyers asserted even more extreme powers – the right to disregard entirely the judge and the law. On Monday 6 August, Obama’s lawyers filed an appeal to the injunction – a profoundly important development that, as of this writing, has been scarcely reported.
In the earlier March hearing, US government 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 stated on record that even war correspondents could be locked up indefinitely under the NDAA.
Judge 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. At that time, 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. Government attorneys again, in this hearing, presented no evidence to support their position and brought forth no witnesses. Most incredibly, Obama’s attorneys refused to assure the court, when questioned, that the NDAA’s section 1021 – the provision 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 telling a US federal judge that they could not, or would not, state whether Obama’s government had complied with the legal injunction that she had laid down before them.
To this, Judge Forrest responded that if the provision had indeed been applied, the United States government would be in contempt of court.
Read More: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/aug/10/ndaa-lawsuit-struggle-us-constitution
If we do not have this heinous act overturned, we have lost all the rights guaranteed us in the Bill Of Rights! This is truly a terrifying act on the part of the mega-corporate overlords who now control our executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government, and who will, through this “law”, use the enormous power of the US military to totally subjugate the American people. This act gives them the right to “arrest” any American citizen from any location, at any time, and to detain them for any length of time, without allowing access of any sort to anyone…. attorney, family, or friends, and without bringing any charges or allowing any trial by law….. This act is astounding in its total nullification of the rights guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States. Even more astounding is the lack of action, or reaction, or even knowledge of the import of this act, on the part of the American public ! “We The People” of the United States of America must wake up and fight this tyranny now, or be forever silenced !