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Obama ‘Strongly Objects’ to Religious Liberty Amendment


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Obama ‘Strongly Objects’ to Religious Liberty Amendment

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Jun 12, 2013

By Todd Starnes

The Obama Administration “strongly objects” to a proposed amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act on Wednesday that would have protected the religious rights of soldiers – including evangelical Christian service members who are facing growing hostility towards their religion.

 

The amendment was authored by Rep. John Fleming, R-La. It would have “required the Armed Forces to accommodate ‘actions and speech’ reflecting the conscience, moral, principles or religious beliefs of the member.”

The Obama Administration said the amendment would have a “significant adverse effect on good order, discipline, morale, and mission accomplishment.”

“With its statement, the White House is now endorsing military reprimands of members who keep a Bible on their desk or express a religious belief,” Fleming told Fox News. “This administration is aggressively hostile towards religious beliefs that it deems to be politically incorrect.”

Fleming introduced the amendment after a series of high-profile incidents involving attacks on religious liberty within the military- including an Air Force officer who was told to remove a Bible from his desk because it might give the impression he was endorsing a religion.

He said there are other reports of Christian service members and chaplains being punished for their faith.

  • The Air Force censored a video created by a chaplain because it include the word “God.” The Air Force feared the word might offend Muslims and atheists.
  • A service member received a “severe and possibly career-ending reprimand” for expressing his faith’s religious position about homosexuality in a personal religious blog.
  • A senior military official at Fort Campbell sent out a lengthy email officially instructing officers to recognize “the religious right in America” as a “domestic hate group” akin to the KKK and Neo-Nazis because of its opposition to homosexual behavior.
  • A chaplain was relieved of his command over a military chapel because, consistent with DOMA’s definition of marriage, he could not allow same-sex weddings to take place in the chapel.

Last month Coast Guard Rear Admiral William Lee told a National Day of Prayer audience that religious liberty was being threatened by Pentagon lawyers and service members are being told to hide their faith in Christ.

“Leaders like myself are feeling the constraints of rules and regulations and guidance issued by lawyers that put us in a tighter and tighter box regarding our constitutional right to express our religious faith,” he said.

Fleming said the purpose of his amendment is to clarify ambiguities in the Pentagon’s policies.

“The bottom line is the military is bending over backwards to remove – even in the case of chaplains – expressions of faith and conscience,” Fleming said.

Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, called the Obama Administration’s edict a “chilling suppression of religious freedom.”

“The Obama administration has joined forces with those who are attacking the religious freedoms of those who serve in our Armed Services,” Perkins said. “The Administration’s opposition to Rep. Fleming’s religious freedom amendment reveals that this administration has gone beyond accommodating the anti-Christian activists who want to remove any vestige of Christianity from the military, to aiding them by blocking this bipartisan measure.”

 

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THEY SHOULD ALL WALK OUT AND QUIT AND TELL OBAMA TO GO TO HIS ATHIESTS AND MUSLIMS AND ASK THEM TO PROTECT AMERICA ..

 

and none of them show up for and court marshal hearings .. on the prosecution side or defendent side .. all that would be left is obama and a couple athiests and muslims .. he can promote them all to generals and  that could be barak hussiens army... they all just ignore any fines .. just dont do anything .. who would enforce  anything on them .. the police ?

 

is the police going to lock up the entire military , under the command of barak hussien.



i think its against the law to say what i think aught to be done hear .. but its simular to his middle name

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His radicalism is showing up more and more in his actions.  Our Constitution does not require God to be stripped from law.  We must protect our unalienable rights of liberty.

We can't be swayed by the propagandist media.  They are the ones who help bring tyranny to reign. 

 

All I can say is now is the time to make changes, to alter our future. This is a grace period for us as Christians.  Now is the time to make changes.  Christ is the only path, not only for eternity, but for all the world, and for peace. 

 

God Bless Everyone and The United States of America. 

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“The Obama administration has joined forces with those who are attacking the religious freedoms of those who serve in our Armed Services,” Perkins said. “The Administration’s opposition to Rep. Fleming’s religious freedom amendment reveals that this administration has gone beyond accommodating the anti-Christian activists who want to remove any vestige of Christianity from the military, to aiding them by blocking this bipartisan measure.”

Why didnt you highlight this section?

The Obama administration HAS JOINED FORCES with those who are attacking the religeous freedoms

of those who serve in our armed services.

which one is it? first it says they dont support then it does get your story straight.

But I noticed you just had to highlight what you wanted others to see

and not the truth.This whole story has ZERO TRUTH TO IT.

republican La. should have been DA. 

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Why in the world does anyone give a rat's tail about what Obama "strongly objects' to?!?!?!? So frickin what? He objects to the amendment. He has objected to this statute every frickin time he has signed the day'um bill into law!!!

 

I was actually surprised that anything was even mentioned about religious conscience in this particular Bill... So I went and did some research and sure enough, for whatever reason, the religious conscience of Chaplains is indeed an aspect of this law...

 

BUT... Please please tell me that people do not think the substance of this Bill is about whether or not Chaplains will be forced to marry *** military people.  (Oh.. and btw, they don't have to, and that right to exercise religious conscience is protected by law).

 

Banging head on laptop keyboard.... I am not disagreeing with the author as much as I am holding him responsible for derailing attention from a law that could directly impact the lives of every single American and focusing upon a small minority group who may or may not want to marry and whom have been the focus .....every frickin time this bill is signed into law !!!! This is not frickin new... 

 

I am hoping it is also not new that this Bill attacks the very foundation of our Constitution... and doesn't really have a day'um thing to do with *** marriage.... (banging head again instead of throwing computer out the window)

I'm holding the author responsible for focusing on mensch and ignoring the fact that the very foundation of the Constitution has been attacked by this law! The fact  you can be detained indefinitely absent benefit of being charged, counsel, or writ of habeas corpus affects your  life  and the lives of those you love far more directly,  and seriously with direct critical impact on your actual well-being, than whether or not Ben and Jerry can get married by the military chaplain.... 

 

Its as if there was a conspiracy group that said: Oh I know, distract people from the fact they have lost their primary rights as US citizens when we directly ignored/attacked the Constitution by passing laws that eliminate Constitutional rights and protections.... and get journalists to write articles suggesting that God Himself is being attacked through opening up the questionable possibility that Chaplains might be forced to marry Ben and Jerry.... 

 

Never mind the existing statute has and continues to protect the Chaplains religious conscience.... lets get a journalist to write that Obama strongly opposes this... and if we're able to get people to throw critical thinking out the window by invoking a hot emotional button leading them to believe God is being attacked.....and that Obama's strong opposition actually means something.... then maybe Americans won't notice they have lost the very essence of their Constitutional Rights.... (oh and by the way, once we get control of these rights... we'll start working on how we are going to define their God, what God to worship, how to worship their God, and what happens if they resist or insist upon religious freedom. See above, they lost that right they day we put into law that the gov't gets to define what a terrorist is. Hopefully, the conservative right will not notice we've already begun to  quasi define them as religious terrorists.... it will be a short and easy step to go after them first).  

 

Hellooooooo earth to American citizens.... 

 

 Its starting to scare me that people can be so easily manipulated and please be clear.... I am not defending the right of Ben and Jerry to marry, I'm not asserting that Chaplains should be forced to marry them.... And instead I am saying that people are being derailed from the very real and present dangers of this Bill, through manipulating their focus toward a very small issue (which in truth is not even an issue because statute has and continues to protect the Chaplains religious conscience!!!!!). 

 

The UK is clear about the crux of the issue with the NDAA. Why is it they know its not about *** marriage. Why is it the UK is able to see so clearly the real dangers imposed by this law, so much so, they write about it in the daily newspaper? Here is what the UK has to say about the NDAA:

Quote:

Yes, the worst things you may have heard about the National Defense Authorization Act, which has formally ended 254 years of democracy in the United States of America, and driven a stake through the heart of the bill of rights, are all really true. The act passed with large margins in both the House and the Senate on the last day of last year – even as tens of thousands of Americans were frantically begging their representatives to secure Americans' habeas corpus rights in the final version. 

 

It does indeed – contrary to the many flatout-false form letters I have seen that both senators and representatives sent to their constituents, misleading them about the fact that the NDAA destroys their due process rights. Under the act, anyone can be described as a 'belligerent".

 

As the New American website puts it,:

 

And with a new bill now being introduced to make it a crime to protest in a way that disrupts any government process – or to get close to anyone with secret service protection – the push to legally lock down the United Police States is in full force.

 

"ubsequent clauses (Section 1022, for example) unlawfully give the president the absolute and unquestionable authority to deploy the armed forces of the United States to apprehend and to indefinitely detain those suspected of threatening the security of the 'homeland'. In the language of this legislation, these people are called 'covered persons'. [clever huh]

 

"The universe of potential 'covered persons' includes every citizen of the United States of America. Any American could one day find himself or herself branded a 'belligerent' and thus subject to the complete confiscation of his or her constitutional civil liberties and nearly never-ending incarceration in a military prison."

Overstated? Let's be clear: the NDAA grants the president the power to kidnap any American anywhere in the United States and hold him or her in prison forever without trial. The president's own signing statement, incredibly, confirmed that he had that power. As I have been warning since 2006: there is not a country on the planet that you can name that has ever set in place a system otorture, and of detention without trial, for an "other", supposedly external threat that did not end up using it pretty quickly on its own citizens.

 

And Guantánamo has indeed come home: Guantánamo is in our front yards now and our workplaces; it did not even take much more than half a decade. On 1 March, the NDAA will go into effect – if a judicial hearing scheduled for this week does not block it – and no one in America, no US citizen, will be safe from being detained indefinitely – in effect, "disappeared.".

 

As former Reagan official, now Ron Paul supporter, Bruce Fein points out, on 1 March, we won't just lose the bill of rights; we will lose due process altogether. We will be back at the place where we were, in terms of legal tradition, before the signing of the Magna Carta – when kings could throw people in prison at will, to rot there forever. If we had cared more about what was being done to brown people with Muslim names on a Cuban coastline, and raised our voices louder against their having been held without charge for years, or against their being tried in kangaroo courts called military tribunals, we might now be safer now from a new law mandating for us also the threat of abduction and fear of perpetual incarceration.

 

We didn't care, or we didn't care enough – and here we are. We acclimated, we got distracted, the Oscars were coming up … but the fake "battlefield" was brought home to us, now real enough. Though it is not "we" versus Muslims in this conflict; it is our very own government versus "us". As one of my Facebook community members remarked bitterly, of our House representatives, our Senate leaders and our president, "They hate our freedoms."

 

The NDAA is, in the words of Shahid Buttar of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, "the worst threat to civil liberties since COINTELPRO. It gives the government the power to presume guilt rather than innocence, and indefinitely imprison anyone accused of a 'belligerent act' or terror-related offense without trial." He points out that it gives future presidents the power to arrest their political critics. That may even be understating things: it is actually, in my view, the worst threat to civil liberty in the US since habeas corpus was last suspended, during the American civil war.

 

On a conference call for media last Friday, hosted by the cross-partisan BORDC (which now includes the 40,000 members of the American Freedom Campaign, which we had co-founded as a response to the warning in 2007 that America was facing a "fascist shift") and the right-leaning Tenth Amendment Foundation, we were all speaking the same language of fear for our freedom, even though our perspectives spanned the political spectrum. As the Tenth Amendment Foundation put it, we are a family with diverse views – and families know when it is time to put aside their differences. If there were ever a time to do so, it is now.


This grassroots effort is pushing hard in many places. Protests that included libertarians, progressives, Tea Party members and Occupy participants have been held nationwide in recent weeks. State legislators in Virginia, Tennessee, and Washington have also introduced bills to prevent state agencies from aiding in any detention operations that might be authorized by the NDAA. In other words, they are educating sheriffs and police to refuse to comply with the NDAA's orders. This presents an Orwellian or 1776-type scenario, depending upon your point of view, in which the federal government, or even the president, might issue orders to detain US citizens – which local sheriffs and police would be legally bound to resist.

 

What will happen next? I wrote recently that the US is experiencing something like a civil war, with only one side at this point – the corporatist side – aggressing. This grassroots, local-leader movement represents a defensive strategy in what is being now tacitly recognized as unprovoked aggression against an entire nation, and an entire people. (Here I should say, mindful of the warning issued to me by NYPD, which arrested me, to avoid saying anything that could be construed as "incitement to riot" and that I believe in nonviolent resistance.)

 

The local resistance to the police state goes further: midwestern cities, such as Chicago and Minneapolis, are considering "torture-free city" resolutions that would prohibit the torture which civil libertarians see as likely under a military detention regime expanded by the NDAA. (Bradley Manning's initial treatment in solitary confinement, for instance, met some Red Cross definitions of torture.)

 

But I am far more scared than hopeful, because nothing about the NDAA's legislative passage worked as democracy is supposed to work. Senator Dianne Feinstein, for instance, in spite of her proposed (defeated) amendment that could have defended due process more completely, has nonetheless not fought to repeal the law – even though her constituents in California would, no doubt, overwhelmingly support her in doing so. Huge majorities passed this bill into law – despite the fact that Americans across the spectrum were appalled and besieging their legislators. And this president nailed it to the table – even though his own constituency is up in arms about it.

 

History shows that at this point, there isn't much time to mount a defense: once the first few arrests take place, people go quiet. There is only one solution: organize votes loudly and publicly to defeat every single signer of this bill in November's general election. Then, once we have our Republic back and the rule of law, we can deal with the actual treason that this law represents.

 

 

Another summary from an American Journal

 

Ron Paul:

The dangers in the NDAA are its alarmingly vague, undefined criteria for who can be indefinitely detained by the US government without trial. It is now no longer limited to members of al Qaeda or the Taliban, but anyone accused of “substantially supporting” such groups or “associated forces.” How closely associated? And what constitutes "substantial" support

 

 

President Barack Obama signed a law  granting himself absolute power to indefinitely detain American citizens suspected (by him) of being "belligerents." He promises he won't use it, however. 

With the President's signing of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the writ of habeas corpus — a civil right so fundamental to Anglo-American common law history that it predates the Magna Carta — is voidable upon the command of the President of the United States. The Sixth Amendment right to counsel is also revocable at his will.
 
The United States, as Senator Lindsey Graham declared during floor debate in the Senate, is now a theatre in the War on Terror and Americans "can be detained indefinitely ... and when you say to the interrogator, 'I want my lawyer,' the interrogator will say, 'You don't have a right to a lawyer because you're a military threat.'"
 
Don't worry, though. Although the President now wields this enormous power, he adamantly denies that he will ever "authorize the indefinite military detention without trial of American citizens." That guarantee is all that stands between American citizens and life in prison on arbitrary charges of conspiring to commit or committing acts belligerent to the homeland.
 
The President continued by explaining that to indefinitely detain American citizens without a trial on the charges laid against them "would break with our most important traditions and values as a nation." 
 
Ironically, the signing statement in which President Obama gave these assurances is itself violative of the Constitution, the separation of powers established therein, and only demonstrates his proclivity for ignoring constitutional restraints on the exercise of power once those powers have been placed (albeit illegally) by a complicit Congress at his disposal.
 
Once development of it begins in the body politic, the muscle of tyranny never atrophies.
 
Supporters of the law (including President Obama) point to the "undeniable" success achieved against "suspected terrorists." Although President Obama claims that the section of the NDAA (1021) authorizing the President to detain these suspects "breaks no new ground and is unnecessary," the President's interpretation of just who inhabits the universe of likely suspects (as explained in the signing statement appended to the NDAA) includes "al-Qa'ida and its affiliates and adherents...." 
 
Since the beginning of hostilities in the wake of 9/11, the federal government has often had problems proving membership in al-Qaeda of those arrested as "enemy combatants" in the War on Terror, so imagine the difficulty they would face in presenting evidence of affiliation or adherence to that shadowy, ill-defined organization.
 
The danger of the vagueness of crucial terms of the NDAA was addressed by current Republican presidential contender Congressman Ron Paul (R-Texas) during a phone conference with supporters in Iowa:
 
The dangers in the NDAA are its alarmingly vague, undefined criteria for who can be indefinitely detained by the US government without trial. It is now no longer limited to members of al Qaeda or the Taliban, but anyone accused of “substantially supporting” such groups or “associated forces.” How closely associated? And what constitutes "substantial" support? What if it was discovered that someone who committed a terrorist act was once involved with a charity? Or supported a political candidate? Are all donors of that charity or supporters of that candidate now suspect, and subject to indefinite detainment? Is that charity now an associated force? 
 
The Bill of Rights has no exemption for "really bad people" or terrorists or even non-citizens. It is a key check on government power against any person. That is not a weakness in our legal system; it is the very strength of our legal system. The NDAA attempts to justify abridging the Bill of Rights on the theory that rights are suspended in a time of war, and the entire Unites States is a battlefield in the War on Terror. This is a very dangerous development indeed. Beware.
 
Fortunately for the President, the NDAA absolves him of the requirement of gathering and presenting to an impartial judge evidence probative of such evil associations. The mere suspicion of such suffices as a justification for the indefinite imprisonment of those so suspected.
 
As if the foregoing roster of Stalinist-style authoritarianism isn't an imposing enough threat to freedom, there is an additional aspect of the new law that places the civil liberties of Americans in greater peril. 
 
The NDAA places the American military at the disposal of the President for the apprehension, arrest, and detention of those suspected of posing a danger to the homeland (whether inside or outside the borders of the United States and whether the suspect be a citizen or foreigner). The endowment of such a power to the President by the Congress is nothing less than a de facto legislative repeal of the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, the law forbidding the use of the military in domestic law enforcement.
 
Again, the aforementioned Senator Lindsey Graham has no qualms shredding that parchment protection from tyranny, either. Said Graham: "I don't believe fighting al Qaeda is a law enforcement function. I believe our military should be deeply involved in fighting these guys at home and abroad."
 
The undeniable unconstitutionality of the National Defense Authorization Act and its violation of the Posse Comitatus Act is likely to result in the necessity of states nullifying those sections of the law that exceed the enumerated powers of Congress. This remedy would be applied by the legislatures of the states in an effort to protect its citizens from arrest and extradition by armed members of the federal armed forces. This effort to resist unfettered federal authority would rival the intensity of the Nullification Crisis of the 1830s — a confrontation that culminated in the Civil War and the death of at least 600,000 Americans.  
 
While the frightening abolition of civil liberties contained in the NDAA could not have been codified were it not for the signature of President Obama, the complicity of the Congress in easing our Republic's "slip into tyranny" should not be overlooked.
 
Sixty-eight percent of the House of Representatives voted for this measure, for example. Perhaps in the future elections those lawmakers who voted in favor of the measure will be held accountable by their constituents for such an inexplicable violation of the congressional oath of office and its requirement that members protect the Constitution from all enemies, foreign and domestic.
 
Other sections of the 500-plus-page, $662-billion law authorizes the continued expenditure of money on the perpetuation of two unconstitutional foreign conflicts (Iraq and Afghanistan), as well as greasing the skids for the deployment of the American military into Iran if economic sanctions fail to persuade Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to see things our way.
 
While the NDAA's effect on the Constitution is all but ignored by the administration and Congress, its effect on oil prices is taken very seriously. Under applicable provisions of the new law, President Obama may punish international firms which buy oil from Iran. President Obama has an out, however, if he believes that the imposition of such penalties is driving up the price of crude. 
 
The New York Times quotes an unnamed administration official who explains the importance of  vigilantly protecting the stability of the volatile oil market: "We have to do it in a timely way and phased way to avoid repercussions to the oil market, and make sure the revenues to Iran are reduced."
 
Finally, President Obama signed the NDAA, and the depth of the impact of this law on the freedom of Americans and the perpetuation of our Constitution cannot be measured.  Promises to restrain oneself from abusing power are unreliable. As Thomas Jefferson once warned:
 
Free government is founded in jealousy, not confidence. It is jealousy and not confidence which prescribes limited constitutions, to bind those we are obliged to trust with power.... In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in men, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.
 

END

 

Hopefully I don't come across as critical of anyone responding to the thread article. Its not my intention. They are all important points given the context of the article. And my issue is indeed with the context of the article and its author..... We are in a time wherein imo, its irresponsible to joust with windmills or lead others to do so, in order to get snappy headlines and a readership.... when Rome has been set on fire and is burning. To think that limitation or termination of Constitutionally protected rights will end here, is foolhardy. Nothing in history would support that belief. And if we don't focus on defending the same Constitution that protects our rights to freedom of religious belief and practice... if we get derailed with emotionally hot buttons and wage the fight there..... it would be inexcusable somewhere down the road for anyone to be shocked, surprised, indignant, or angry that their religious freedom has become the next target....

 

Blessings of His Grace and Wisdom~~

 

Apologies for the font editing...tried to fix some of it... and... to no avail in some cases...

Edited by Rayzur
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Why in the world does anyone give a rat's tail about what Obama "strongly objects' to?!?!?!? So frickin what? He objects to the amendment. He has objected to this statute every frickin time he has signed the day'um bill into law!!!

 

I was actually surprised that anything was even mentioned about religious conscience in this particular Bill... So I went and did some research and sure enough, for whatever reason, the religious conscience of Chaplains is indeed an aspect of this law...

 

BUT... Please please tell me that people do not think the substance of this Bill is about whether or not Chaplains will be forced to marry *** military people.  (Oh.. and btw, they don't have to, and that right to exercise religious conscience is protected by law).

 

Banging head on laptop keyboard.... I am not disagreeing with the author as much as I am holding him responsible for derailing attention from a law that could directly impact the lives of every single American and focusing upon a small minority group who may or may not want to marry and whom have been the focus .....every frickin time this bill is signed into law !!!! This is not frickin new... 

 

I am hoping it is also not new that this Bill attacks the very foundation of our Constitution... and doesn't really have a day'um thing to do with *** marriage.... (banging head again instead of throwing computer out the window)

I'm holding the author responsible for focusing on mensch and ignoring the fact that the very foundation of the Constitution has been attacked by this law! The fact  you can be detained indefinitely absent benefit of being charged, counsel, or writ of habeas corpus affects your  life  and the lives of those you love far more directly,  and seriously with direct critical impact on your actual well-being, than whether or not Ben and Jerry can get married by the military chaplain.... 

 

Its as if there was a conspiracy group that said: Oh I know, distract people from the fact they have lost their primary rights as US citizens when we directly ignored/attacked the Constitution by passing laws that eliminate Constitutional rights and protections.... and get journalists to write articles suggesting that God Himself is being attacked through opening up the questionable possibility that Chaplains might be forced to marry Ben and Jerry.... 

 

Never mind the existing statute has and continues to protect the Chaplains religious conscience.... lets get a journalist to write that Obama strongly opposes this... and if we're able to get people to throw critical thinking out the window by invoking a hot emotional button leading them to believe God is being attacked.....and that Obama's strong opposition actually means something.... then maybe Americans won't notice they have lost the very essence of their Constitutional Rights.... (oh and by the way, once we get control of these rights... we'll start working on how we are going to define their God, what God to worship, how to worship their God, and what happens if they resist or insist upon religious freedom. See above, they lost that right they day we put into law that the gov't gets to define what a terrorist is. Hopefully, the conservative right will not notice we've already begun to  quasi define them as religious terrorists.... it will be a short and easy step to go after them first).  

 

Hellooooooo earth to American citizens.... 

 

 Its starting to scare me that people can be so easily manipulated and please be clear.... I am not defending the right of Ben and Jerry to marry, I'm not asserting that Chaplains should be forced to marry them.... And instead I am saying that people are being derailed from the very real and present dangers of this Bill, through manipulating their focus toward a very small issue (which in truth is not even an issue because statute has and continues to protect the Chaplains religious conscience!!!!!). 

 

The UK is clear about the crux of the issue with the NDAA. Why is it they know its not about *** marriage. Why is it the UK is able to see so clearly the real dangers imposed by this law, so much so, they write about it in the daily newspaper? Here is what the UK has to say about the NDAA:

Quote:

Yes, the worst things you may have heard about the National Defense Authorization Act, which has formally ended 254 years of democracy in the United States of America, and driven a stake through the heart of the bill of rights, are all really true. The act passed with large margins in both the House and the Senate on the last day of last year – even as tens of thousands of Americans were frantically begging their representatives to secure Americans' habeas corpus rights in the final version. 

 

It does indeed – contrary to the many flatout-false form letters I have seen that both senators and representatives sent to their constituents, misleading them about the fact that the NDAA destroys their due process rights. Under the act, anyone can be described as a 'belligerent".

 

As the New American website puts it,:

 

And with a new bill now being introduced to make it a crime to protest in a way that disrupts any government process – or to get close to anyone with secret service protection – the push to legally lock down the United Police States is in full force.

 

"ubsequent clauses (Section 1022, for example) unlawfully give the president the absolute and unquestionable authority to deploy the armed forces of the United States to apprehend and to indefinitely detain those suspected of threatening the security of the 'homeland'. In the language of this legislation, these people are called 'covered persons'. [clever huh]

 

"The universe of potential 'covered persons' includes every citizen of the United States of America. Any American could one day find himself or herself branded a 'belligerent' and thus subject to the complete confiscation of his or her constitutional civil liberties and nearly never-ending incarceration in a military prison."

Overstated? Let's be clear: the NDAA grants the president the power to kidnap any American anywhere in the United States and hold him or her in prison forever without trial. The president's own signing statement, incredibly, confirmed that he had that power. As I have been warning since 2006: there is not a country on the planet that you can name that has ever set in place a system otorture, and of detention without trial, for an "other", supposedly external threat that did not end up using it pretty quickly on its own citizens.

 

And Guantánamo has indeed come home: Guantánamo is in our front yards now and our workplaces; it did not even take much more than half a decade. On 1 March, the NDAA will go into effect – if a judicial hearing scheduled for this week does not block it – and no one in America, no US citizen, will be safe from being detained indefinitely – in effect, "disappeared.".

 

As former Reagan official, now Ron Paul supporter, Bruce Fein points out, on 1 March, we won't just lose the bill of rights; we will lose due process altogether. We will be back at the place where we were, in terms of legal tradition, before the signing of the Magna Carta – when kings could throw people in prison at will, to rot there forever. If we had cared more about what was being done to brown people with Muslim names on a Cuban coastline, and raised our voices louder against their having been held without charge for years, or against their being tried in kangaroo courts called military tribunals, we might now be safer now from a new law mandating for us also the threat of abduction and fear of perpetual incarceration.

 

We didn't care, or we didn't care enough – and here we are. We acclimated, we got distracted, the Oscars were coming up … but the fake "battlefield" was brought home to us, now real enough. Though it is not "we" versus Muslims in this conflict; it is our very own government versus "us". As one of my Facebook community members remarked bitterly, of our House representatives, our Senate leaders and our president, "They hate our freedoms."

 

The NDAA is, in the words of Shahid Buttar of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, "the worst threat to civil liberties since COINTELPRO. It gives the government the power to presume guilt rather than innocence, and indefinitely imprison anyone accused of a 'belligerent act' or terror-related offense without trial." He points out that it gives future presidents the power to arrest their political critics. That may even be understating things: it is actually, in my view, the worst threat to civil liberty in the US since habeas corpus was last suspended, during the American civil war.

 

On a conference call for media last Friday, hosted by the cross-partisan BORDC (which now includes the 40,000 members of the American Freedom Campaign, which we had co-founded as a response to the warning in 2007 that America was facing a "fascist shift") and the right-leaning Tenth Amendment Foundation, we were all speaking the same language of fear for our freedom, even though our perspectives spanned the political spectrum. As the Tenth Amendment Foundation put it, we are a family with diverse views – and families know when it is time to put aside their differences. If there were ever a time to do so, it is now.

This grassroots effort is pushing hard in many places. Protests that included libertarians, progressives, Tea Party members and Occupy participants have been held nationwide in recent weeks. State legislators in Virginia, Tennessee, and Washington have also introduced bills to prevent state agencies from aiding in any detention operations that might be authorized by the NDAA. In other words, they are educating sheriffs and police to refuse to comply with the NDAA's orders. This presents an Orwellian or 1776-type scenario, depending upon your point of view, in which the federal government, or even the president, might issue orders to detain US citizens – which local sheriffs and police would be legally bound to resist.

 

What will happen next? I wrote recently that the US is experiencing something like a civil war, with only one side at this point – the corporatist side – aggressing. This grassroots, local-leader movement represents a defensive strategy in what is being now tacitly recognized as unprovoked aggression against an entire nation, and an entire people. (Here I should say, mindful of the warning issued to me by NYPD, which arrested me, to avoid saying anything that could be construed as "incitement to riot" and that I believe in nonviolent resistance.)

 

The local resistance to the police state goes further: midwestern cities, such as Chicago and Minneapolis, are considering "torture-free city" resolutions that would prohibit the torture which civil libertarians see as likely under a military detention regime expanded by the NDAA. (Bradley Manning's initial treatment in solitary confinement, for instance, met some Red Cross definitions of torture.)

 

But I am far more scared than hopeful, because nothing about the NDAA's legislative passage worked as democracy is supposed to work. Senator Dianne Feinstein, for instance, in spite of her proposed (defeated) amendment that could have defended due process more completely, has nonetheless not fought to repeal the law – even though her constituents in California would, no doubt, overwhelmingly support her in doing so. Huge majorities passed this bill into law – despite the fact that Americans across the spectrum were appalled and besieging their legislators. And this president nailed it to the table – even though his own constituency is up in arms about it.

 

History shows that at this point, there isn't much time to mount a defense: once the first few arrests take place, people go quiet. There is only one solution: organize votes loudly and publicly to defeat every single signer of this bill in November's general election. Then, once we have our Republic back and the rule of law, we can deal with the actual treason that this law represents.

 

 

Another summary from an American Journal

 

Ron Paul:

The dangers in the NDAA are its alarmingly vague, undefined criteria for who can be indefinitely detained by the US government without trial. It is now no longer limited to members of al Qaeda or the Taliban, but anyone accused of “substantially supporting” such groups or “associated forces.” How closely associated? And what constitutes "substantial" support

 

 

President Barack Obama signed a law  granting himself absolute power to indefinitely detain American citizens suspected (by him) of being "belligerents." He promises he won't use it, however. 

With the President's signing of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the writ of habeas corpus — a civil right so fundamental to Anglo-American common law history that it predates the Magna Carta — is voidable upon the command of the President of the United States. The Sixth Amendment right to counsel is also revocable at his will.
 
The United States, as Senator Lindsey Graham declared during floor debate in the Senate, is now a theatre in the War on Terror and Americans "can be detained indefinitely ... and when you say to the interrogator, 'I want my lawyer,' the interrogator will say, 'You don't have a right to a lawyer because you're a military threat.'"
 
Don't worry, though. Although the President now wields this enormous power, he adamantly denies that he will ever "authorize the indefinite military detention without trial of American citizens." That guarantee is all that stands between American citizens and life in prison on arbitrary charges of conspiring to commit or committing acts belligerent to the homeland.
 
The President continued by explaining that to indefinitely detain American citizens without a trial on the charges laid against them "would break with our most important traditions and values as a nation." 
 
Ironically, the signing statement in which President Obama gave these assurances is itself violative of the Constitution, the separation of powers established therein, and only demonstrates his proclivity for ignoring constitutional restraints on the exercise of power once those powers have been placed (albeit illegally) by a complicit Congress at his disposal.
 
Once development of it begins in the body politic, the muscle of tyranny never atrophies.
 
Supporters of the law (including President Obama) point to the "undeniable" success achieved against "suspected terrorists." Although President Obama claims that the section of the NDAA (1021) authorizing the President to detain these suspects "breaks no new ground and is unnecessary," the President's interpretation of just who inhabits the universe of likely suspects (as explained in the signing statement appended to the NDAA) includes "al-Qa'ida and its affiliates and adherents...." 
 
Since the beginning of hostilities in the wake of 9/11, the federal government has often had problems proving membership in al-Qaeda of those arrested as "enemy combatants" in the War on Terror, so imagine the difficulty they would face in presenting evidence of affiliation or adherence to that shadowy, ill-defined organization.
 
The danger of the vagueness of crucial terms of the NDAA was addressed by current Republican presidential contender Congressman Ron Paul (R-Texas) during a phone conference with supporters in Iowa:
 
The dangers in the NDAA are its alarmingly vague, undefined criteria for who can be indefinitely detained by the US government without trial. It is now no longer limited to members of al Qaeda or the Taliban, but anyone accused of “substantially supporting” such groups or “associated forces.” How closely associated? And what constitutes "substantial" support? What if it was discovered that someone who committed a terrorist act was once involved with a charity? Or supported a political candidate? Are all donors of that charity or supporters of that candidate now suspect, and subject to indefinite detainment? Is that charity now an associated force? 
 
The Bill of Rights has no exemption for "really bad people" or terrorists or even non-citizens. It is a key check on government power against any person. That is not a weakness in our legal system; it is the very strength of our legal system. The NDAA attempts to justify abridging the Bill of Rights on the theory that rights are suspended in a time of war, and the entire Unites States is a battlefield in the War on Terror. This is a very dangerous development indeed. Beware.
 
Fortunately for the President, the NDAA absolves him of the requirement of gathering and presenting to an impartial judge evidence probative of such evil associations. The mere suspicion of such suffices as a justification for the indefinite imprisonment of those so suspected.
 
As if the foregoing roster of Stalinist-style authoritarianism isn't an imposing enough threat to freedom, there is an additional aspect of the new law that places the civil liberties of Americans in greater peril. 
 
The NDAA places the American military at the disposal of the President for the apprehension, arrest, and detention of those suspected of posing a danger to the homeland (whether inside or outside the borders of the United States and whether the suspect be a citizen or foreigner). The endowment of such a power to the President by the Congress is nothing less than a de facto legislative repeal of the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, the law forbidding the use of the military in domestic law enforcement.
 
Again, the aforementioned Senator Lindsey Graham has no qualms shredding that parchment protection from tyranny, either. Said Graham: "I don't believe fighting al Qaeda is a law enforcement function. I believe our military should be deeply involved in fighting these guys at home and abroad."
 
The undeniable unconstitutionality of the National Defense Authorization Act and its violation of the Posse Comitatus Act is likely to result in the necessity of states nullifying those sections of the law that exceed the enumerated powers of Congress. This remedy would be applied by the legislatures of the states in an effort to protect its citizens from arrest and extradition by armed members of the federal armed forces. This effort to resist unfettered federal authority would rival the intensity of the Nullification Crisis of the 1830s — a confrontation that culminated in the Civil War and the death of at least 600,000 Americans.  
 
While the frightening abolition of civil liberties contained in the NDAA could not have been codified were it not for the signature of President Obama, the complicity of the Congress in easing our Republic's "slip into tyranny" should not be overlooked.
 
Sixty-eight percent of the House of Representatives voted for this measure, for example. Perhaps in the future elections those lawmakers who voted in favor of the measure will be held accountable by their constituents for such an inexplicable violation of the congressional oath of office and its requirement that members protect the Constitution from all enemies, foreign and domestic.
 
Other sections of the 500-plus-page, $662-billion law authorizes the continued expenditure of money on the perpetuation of two unconstitutional foreign conflicts (Iraq and Afghanistan), as well as greasing the skids for the deployment of the American military into Iran if economic sanctions fail to persuade Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to see things our way.
 
While the NDAA's effect on the Constitution is all but ignored by the administration and Congress, its effect on oil prices is taken very seriously. Under applicable provisions of the new law, President Obama may punish international firms which buy oil from Iran. President Obama has an out, however, if he believes that the imposition of such penalties is driving up the price of crude. 
 
The New York Times quotes an unnamed administration official who explains the importance of  vigilantly protecting the stability of the volatile oil market: "We have to do it in a timely way and phased way to avoid repercussions to the oil market, and make sure the revenues to Iran are reduced." :twothumbs: 
 
Finally, President Obama signed the NDAA, and the depth of the impact of this law on the freedom of Americans and the perpetuation of our Constitution cannot be measured.  Promises to restrain oneself from abusing power are unreliable. As Thomas Jefferson once warned:
 
Free government is founded in jealousy, not confidence. It is jealousy and not confidence which prescribes limited constitutions, to bind those we are obliged to trust with power.... In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in men, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.
 

END

 

Hopefully I don't come across as critical of anyone responding to the thread article. Its not my intention. They are all important points given the context of the article. And my issue is indeed with the context of the article and its author..... We are in a time wherein imo, its irresponsible to joust with windmills or lead others to do so, in order to get snappy headlines and a readership.... when Rome has been set on fire and is burning. To think that limitation or termination of Constitutionally protected rights will end here, is foolhardy. Nothing in history would support that belief. And if we don't focus on defending the same Constitution that protects our rights to freedom of religious belief and practice... if we get derailed with emotionally hot buttons and wage the fight there..... it would be inexcusable somewhere down the road for anyone to be shocked, surprised, indignant, or angry that their religious freedom has become the next target....

 

Blessings of His Grace and Wisdom~~

 

 

:tiphat: Thank You Rayzur.

 

I was going to try and shorten the quote... but every word was relevant and important!

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