War on America

[southern_slut]

And what about the legislation that flubbed earlier in '09 if I recall, that would force your cell phone to accept text messages from government agencies. The bill that McCain held draw up to implement a system similar to China's that would regulate what internet sites are "available" to the American public? These aren't left overs from the Bush administration, these are right up there with 'affirmative action' and 'no child left behind', for the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. I;'m sure people feel this gives us power against Terrorists, so they can no longer hide behind red tape. What about in '09 when the head of Homeland Security drafted a list of right0wing war veterans and Tea Party activists, citing them as 'seditious, domestic terrorist organizations'? Me, personally, I just want the government to leave me to my god damn business and quit trying to tell me what's "right" for me.

 

[JackLuis]

The creeping hand of despotism, to my mind.

Giving the Military police powers is like pissing the soup.
Giving the Military absolute power of anything is the dumbest fucking idea I've ever heard.

Why is everyone afraid of 500 assholes in turbans. Even the NRA out numbers them and we've all got guns and ammo.

 

[BoyNextDoor]

Against.

If this provision is allowed to stand it more or less completely undermines your rights as a citizen. The jack-booted thug will have a "Homeland Security" badge as they ship you off to Guantanamo.

Here is the Huffington Post Article. It was a rider on the Defense Auth bill.

"They should not be read their Miranda Rights. They should not be given a lawyer," Graham said.

Lindsay Graham is talking about American Citizens. He is a fucking douche.

 

[Byron In Exile]

Where's the "Eyer is a blithering idiot" option?

This poll sucks.

 

[Sean Renaud]

The United States Senate has declared that America is now a battlefield of the "War on Terror"...

Do you support Senate legislation which arms the United States federal government and the United States military with the authority to indefinitely detain American citizens, apprehended on American soil, without due process or trial, at the sole discretion of the President of the United States and/or his/her proxies, for simply being suspected of any association with terrorism?

My vote is in the thread title...
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Completely against.

 

[eyer]

The Senate voted 88-12 today to limit further debate on the bill...

...final vote could come tomorrow.

 

[Very_Bad_Man]

I'm dead set against this bill. I can see it being abused. Just like they abused the Patriot Act regarding wire taps. This bill give far to much power without giving any recourse to the suspect. Totally unconstitutional.

 

[eyer]

We Are All Terrorists Now

November 30, 2011 by Bob Livingston

The U.S. Senate is considering a bill (National Defense Authorization Act) that would designate the whole world, including U.S. territory, as a battlefield and subject American citizens in the United States to indefinite military detention without the benefit of trial and to attacks along the lines of the drone assassination of supposed terrorist Anwar al-Awlaki.

Many of you scoffed as right-thinking people noted with dread the consequences of President Barack Obama’s carte blanch “extrajudicial” murder of an American citizen based on the approval of a secret committee. If this bill is passed, then the Rubicon will have been crossed. America will have become a complete and possibly irreversible totalitarian military state.

Scoff again if you must, but do so at your own peril. Consider who the government designates as potential terrorists, according to its own missives: people who oppose Obama’s policies; people who stockpile food; people who oppose one-world government; Christians; military veterans returning from overseas engagements; people unhappy with the government’s actions at Waco, Texas, and Ruby Ridge, Idaho; and people opposed to gun control. The Department of Justice and FBI have even sent a form to military-surplus stores describing how to identify suspicious people and instructing them to watch for those who pay with cash; are missing fingers; have a strange smell; make bulk purchases of ammunition, meals ready to eat and flashlights; or who express a concern about privacy.

Coupled with recent news that police and military are now deploying drones over American cities, it’s easy to see — for those who care to look — exactly where we are headed. In the eyes of our government, we are all terrorists now and subject to permanent imprisonment or extermination.

http://www.personalliberty.com/cons...ll-terrorists-now/?eiid=&rmid=2011_11_30_PLA_[P11559932]&rrid=394940233

Nice title...

...plagiarist must read the GB.

Meanwhile...

...while America is declared a battlefield in the infamous War on Terror, leadership of the declared enemy is about ready to dry up:

Al-Qaeda targets dwindle as group shrinks

Ayman al-Zawahiri and his second in command, Abu Yahya al-Libi, are the last remaining “high-value” targets of the CIA’s drone campaign against al-Qaeda in Pakistan, U.S. officials said...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world...roup-shrinks/2011/11/22/gIQAbXJNmN_story.html

So, whom, exactly, are we at war in America with?

 

[firenzi]

This is why you should have fought against the illegal detention and torture of non-American citizens at Guantanamo.

 

[JBCorbell]

America has been sliding towards police state status for years. This doesn't surprise me at all.

 

[Shagly]

We were torturing people long before 2002, try to keep up.

It seems to be the American way.

 

[eyer]

The Fifth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America:

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012 is a $662 billion bill that funds our nation's defense for this fiscal year...

...very deep within the bowels of this bill are the provisions outlined in the opening thread, authorizing American presidents to treat Americans the same as citizens of occupied Iraq or Afghanistan, subjecting us all to military jurisdiction and the jurisdiction of the international laws of war, rather than our Bill of Rights and our domestic criminal laws.

To that concern:

3 amendments were offered today before the final vote this evening on S. 1867 (the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012):

1. Amendment #1125 would limit the mandatory detention provision in Section 1032 to persons captured abroad, not in America - it was rejected 45-55.

2. Amendment #1126 would "clarify" Section 1031 to explicitly state within the section that the authority of the military to detain persons without trial until the end of hostilities does not apply to American citizens - it was rejected 45-55.

3. Amendment #1274 sought to clarify the disposition under the law of war of persons detained by the Armed Forces of the United States pursuant to the Authorization for Use of Military Force - it was rejected 41-59.

Debate successfully limited, the Senate finally voted on the bill earlier this evening - it passed: 93-7.

The 7 Senators voting against the bill are...

Coburn (R-OK)
Harkin (D-IA)
Lee (R-UT)
Merkley (D-OR)
Paul (R-KY)
Sanders (I-VT)
Wyden (D-OR)

...3 Republicans, 3 Democrats, and 1 Independent

With passage of this bill, America has now been legally declared a battlefield of the War on Terror, and American citizens' Fifth Amendment right to due process no longer applies if the President, or his/her proxies, determine a citizen is associated with "terrorism" in any way...

...that citizen can now be detained indefinitely by the military with no legal recourse - no intervention possible by the judicial system of the United States of America.

President Obama has said before he will veto this bill...

...but its overwhelming majority in favor probably diminishes that front fairly significantly, plus the fact the President chose this very day to let loose his lawyers to announce that U.S. citizens are legitimate military targets, further proclaiming that only the executive branch, not the courts, is equipped to make military battlefield targeting decisions about who qualifies as an enemy.

Funny how this "War" has come all the way back home...

...and it is now We, the People who are the suspected enemies.

Congratulations, terrorists...

...you have won.

http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRkuDtPHTwFwo4gnAxBDgBGcFdM354nfdWdN1NZZmbPPegOOZJS​

 

[eyer]

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December 1, 2011

The Day The 5th Amendment Died​

 

[Colonel Hogan]

The Fifth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America:



The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012 is a $662 billion bill that funds our nation's defense for this fiscal year...

...very deep within the bowels of this bill are the provisions outlined in the opening thread, authorizing American presidents to treat Americans the same as citizens of occupied Iraq or Afghanistan, subjecting us all to military jurisdiction and the jurisdiction of the international laws of war, rather than our Bill of Rights and our domestic criminal laws.

To that concern:

3 amendments were offered today before the final vote this evening on S. 1867 (the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012):

1. Amendment #1125 would limit the mandatory detention provision in Section 1032 to persons captured abroad, not in America - it was rejected 45-55.

2. Amendment #1126 would "clarify" Section 1031 to explicitly state within the section that the authority of the military to detain persons without trial until the end of hostilities does not apply to American citizens - it was rejected 45-55.

3. Amendment #1274 sought to clarify the disposition under the law of war of persons detained by the Armed Forces of the United States pursuant to the Authorization for Use of Military Force - it was rejected 41-59.

Debate successfully limited, the Senate finally voted on the bill earlier this evening - it passed: 93-7.

The 7 Senators voting against the bill are...

Coburn (R-OK)
Harkin (D-IA)
Lee (R-UT)
Merkley (D-OR)
Paul (R-KY)
Sanders (I-VT)
Wyden (D-OR)

...3 Republicans, 3 Democrats, and 1 Independent

With passage of this bill, America has now been legally declared a battlefield of the War on Terror, and American citizens' Fifth Amendment right to due process no longer applies if the President, or his/her proxies, determine a citizen is associated with "terrorism" in any way...

...that citizen can now be detained indefinitely by the military with no legal recourse - no intervention possible by the judicial system of the United States of America.

President Obama has said before he will veto this bill...

...but its overwhelming majority in favor probably diminishes that front fairly significantly, plus the fact the President chose this very day to let loose his lawyers to announce that U.S. citizens are legitimate military targets, further proclaiming that only the executive branch, not the courts, is equipped to make military battlefield targeting decisions about who qualifies as an enemy.

Funny how this "War" has come all the way back home...

...and it is now We, the People who are the suspected enemies.

Congratulations, terrorists...

...you have won.

http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRkuDtPHTwFwo4gnAxBDgBGcFdM354nfdWdN1NZZmbPPegOOZJS​

Not so fast. I was holding off commenting on this issue until Congress acted on the proposed amendments. Having once again demonstrated their infinite ability to disappoint, it would seem appropriate to also call attention to their woefully short memories.

One of the early actions of the Bush administration in the first months of the War on Terror following the attacks of 9/11 was to enact legislation dealing with the detention and prosecutions of "illegal combatants" against the United States.

Both the sweeping language of the Authorization for the Use of Military Force and U. S. detention policy had both the intention and effect of denying the right of habeas corpus to those "illegals." Such denial was arguably justified on the basis of several legal precedents dating back to World War II.

In a series of landmark rulings beginning in 2004 and culminating in the 2008 case of Boumediene v. Bush, the United States Supreme Court soundly repudiated the government's interpretation of its Constitutional power vis-a-vis prisoners of war.

One of the first of these was the case of Hamdi v. Rumsfeld. Depending on which alleged facts one believes, Yaser Hamdi was either a humanitarian relief worker entrapped in Afghanistan after the outbreak of war or was a willful affiliate with Taliban forces who engaged in battle against Afghanistan's "Northern Alliance." Hamdi was captured by the Alliance and eventually turned over to the United States military.

Turns out Hamdi was an American citizen.

After his case eventually found its way to the Supreme Court, a plurality of the Court held that while there is "no bar to this Nation’s holding one of its own citizens as an enemy combatant" "we have made clear that, unless Congress acts to suspend it, the Great Writ of habeas corpus allows the Judicial Branch to play a necessary role in maintaining this delicate balance of governance, serving as an important judicial check on the Executive’s discretion in the realm of detentions... Thus, while we do not question that our due process assessment must pay keen attention to the particular burdens faced by the Executive in the context of military action, it would turn our system of checks and balances on its head to suggest that a citizen could not make his way to court with a challenge to the factual basis for his detention by his government, simply because the Executive opposes making available such a challenge. Absent suspension of the writ by Congress, a citizen detained as an enemy combatant is entitled to this process."

The real impact of the Hamdi decision, however, was not merely that it reaffirmed the rather obvious Constitutional protection of habeas for an American citizen, but that it would ultimately be the first in a series of cases that would extend that same protection to alien combatants be they legal or otherwise.

To whatever degree the new legislation purports to portray American soil as a legally defined battlefield, it is not likely to narrow a Constitutional principle that has so recently been so expansively broadened. Nor is it at all clear that the declaration could endure the contravening evidence of a society that remains substantially undisturbed but for the increased inconvenience of invasive airline passenger screening.

The offending passage of the National Defense Authorizing Act for FY 2012 is DOA. It will be successfully challenged by the first unlucky American detained under its imagined "authority."

This, of course, presumes the government is actually dumb enough to attempt to enforce it.

 

[Benedict_Arnold]

None of my concern and I cannot vote but as an interested foreign citizen it just looks like an excuse for more social control by the govenrment and military similar to my own country.

1960-90 was a golden age for freedom.

 

[eyer]

The Senate version of The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012, which passed 93-7 yesterday, also included a provision that repeals Article 125 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ).

Article 125 of the UCMJ makes it illegal to engage in both sodomy with humans and sex with animals.

It states: "(a) Any person subject to this chapter who engages in unnatural carnal copulation with another person of the same or opposite sex or with an animal is guilty of sodomy. Penetration, however slight, is sufficient to complete the offense. (b) Any person found guilty of sodomy shall be punished as a court-martial may direct.”

As posted earlier, the House passed its version of The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012 in May...

..it authorizes $690 billion in military spending.

The Senate version authorizes $622 billion...

...a House-Senate conference committee must now agree on one version of the bill, and that version must be voted on in both chambers before the president can sign it into law.

We shall see if the patriots in the House arise...

 

[eyer]

Can Congress Steal Your Constitutional Freedoms?

by Andrew P. Napolitano

Can the president use the military to arrest anyone he wants, keep that person away from a judge and jury, and lock him up for as long as he wants? In the Senate's dark and terrifying vision of the Constitution, he can.

Congress is supposed to work in public. That requirement is in the Constitution. It is there because the folks who wrote the Constitution had suffered long and hard under the British Privy Council, a secret group that advised the king and ran his government. We know from the now-defunct supercommittee, and other times when Congress has locked its doors, that government loves secrecy and hates transparency. Transparency forces the government to answer to us. Secrecy lets it steal our liberty and our property behind our backs.

Last week, while our minds were on family and turkey and football, the Senate Armed Services Committee decided to meet in secret. So, behind closed doors, it drafted an amendment to a bill appropriating money for the Pentagon. The amendment would permit the president to use the military for law enforcement purposes in the United States. This, of course, would present a radical departure from any use to which the military has been put in the memory of any Americans now living.

The last time the federal government regularly used the military for domestic law enforcement was at the end of Reconstruction in the South, in 1876. In fact, the deal to end Reconstruction resulted in the enactment of federal laws forbidding the domestic use of American military for law enforcement purposes. This has been our law, our custom and our set of values to which every president has adhered for 135 years.

It is not for directing traffic that this legislation would authorize the president to use the military. Essentially, this legislation would enable the president to divert from the criminal justice system, and thus to divert from the protections of the Constitution, any person he pleases. And that person, under this terrifying bill, would have no recourse to a judge to require the president either to file charges against him or to set him free.

Can you imagine an America in which you could lose all liberty – from the presumption of innocence to the right to counsel to fairness from the government to a jury trial – simply because the president says you are dangerous?

Nothing terrified or animated the Founders more than that. The Founders, who wrote the Constitution, had just won a war against a king who had less power than this legislation will give to the president. But to protect their freedoms, they wrote in the Constitution the now iconic guarantee of due process. The Fifth Amendment to the Constitution says, "No person shall be ... deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." Note, the Founders used the word "person." Thus, the requirement of due process must be accorded to all human beings held by the government – not just Americans, not just nice people, but all persons. When Lincoln tried to deny this during the Civil War, the Supreme Court rejected him and held that the Constitution guarantees its protections to everyone that the government restrains, no matter the crime, no matter the charge, no matter the evidence, no matter the danger.

If this legislation becomes law, it will be dangerous for anyone to be right when the government is wrong. It will be dangerous for all of us. Just consider what any president could get away with. Who would he make disappear first? Might it be his political opponents? Might it be you?

December 2, 2011

http://lewrockwell.com/napolitano/napolitano31.1.html

 

[Sean Renaud]

Eyer. If you hold these beleifs as important. Vote democrat and never again support a Republican. Otherwise shut up and support your party.

 

[koalabear]

Eyer. If you hold these beleifs as important. Vote democrat and never again support a Republican. Otherwise shut up and support your party.

See what a stupid fuck you are. Support the USA.

 

[Sean Renaud]

I do.. Currently the only way to support the USA is to vote Democrat until the Republicans return to normalcy.

 

[eyer]

Eyer. If you hold these beleifs as important. Vote democrat and never again support a Republican. Otherwise shut up and support your party.

I've taken this one time to View Post...

...simply to find I wasted my time.

But...

...since I went there:

Shove your "democrat" / "Republican" crap up your punk azz...

...homey don't play those jacked-up, partisan political games.

You, on the other hand, are simply a lowlife traitor...

...just like the 48 Senators in your party.

Now:

Be put back to sleep...

 

[Sean Renaud]

You mean 2 members of my party. And virtually all of your tribe.

Thank you. Please play again. I like solid knock outs.

 

[eyer]

To reiterate the top Democrat's position on this matter:

This past Thursday, the day of the vote in the Senate, President Obama sent two lawyers to specifically address the press; those two lawyers are CIA counsel Stephen Preston and Pentagon counsel Jeh Johnson...

...Johnson proclaimed that only the executive branch, not the courts, is equipped to make military battlefield targeting decisions about who qualifies as an enemy.

And, that American citizens, once they are deemed "an enemy" by the President and/or his proxies, can not only be detained without due process and held indefinitely without cause or acknowledgement, American citizens can also be killed by command of the President without any judicial participation at all.

The President of the United Socialist State of America is openly exhibiting his position that the CIA and the military are now at his command in dealing with American citizens on American soil...

...whereas legally, the CIA and the military are specifically prohibited from conducting any of their business domestically.

So much for the law of the land...


Social democrats and neoconservatives share the same political philosophy...

...statism at home and war abroad.

Murray Rothbard


Here's to both Partys being annihilated by the torch of individual liberty...

 

[koalabear]

I do.. Currently the only way to support the USA is to vote Democrat until the Republicans return to normalcy.

Wrong again stupid fuck, if they are in office now do not vote for them next election.

 

[eyer]

http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRkuDtPHTwFwo4gnAxBDgBGcFdM354nfdWdN1NZZmbPPegOOZJS​

...a House-Senate conference committee must now agree on one version of the bill, and that version must be voted on in both chambers before the president can sign it into law.

We shall see if the patriots in the House arise...

Alas...

...there doesn't seem to be many patriots left.

Republicans currently hold a 242-192 majority in the United States House of Representatives...

...after a week of House-Senate conference committee meetings and consultations with the President, the House tonight has passed the agreed-to version of HR 1540, the $662 billion National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2012, by a vote of 283-136, with 14 not voting.

193 Republican traitors voted for the bill, as did 93 Democrat traitors...

...93 Democrats said Nay to the bill, as did only 43 Republicans. 8 Republicans and 6 Democrats declined to vote at all.

The Senate, where Democrats hold the majority, will vote on its version of the exact same bill either tomorrow or Friday; it is expected to also easily pass, and the President has rescinded his previous intent to veto the legislation and has said he will sign it as passed as soon as it reaches his desk.

The President's threat of veto was centered on his concern that the legislation somehow affected his Executive privilege to capture, detain, and/or assassinate any person - including American citizens - at will; that concern has been soothed evidently...

Here's how wiki summarizes the legislation:

The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2012 is a controversial bill that has been passed by the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate; its text has subsequently been revised by a combined House and Senate committee and will face a vote on December 15 by a joint session of congress.Though the White House and Senate sponsors maintain that that the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists (AUMF) already grants presidential authority for indefinite detention, the Act legislatively codifies the President's authority to indefinitely detain terrorism suspects, including American citizens, without trial as defined in Title X, Subtitle D, SEC 1021(a-e) of the bill. Because those who may be held indefinitely include U.S. citizens arrested on American soil, the Act has received critical attention by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and media sources.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Defense_Authorization_Act_for_Fiscal_Year_2012

Here's what the ACLU says about the legislation:

Don’t be confused by anyone claiming that the indefinite detention legislation does not apply to American citizens. It does. There is an exemption for American citizens from the mandatory detention requirement (section 1032 of the bill), but no exemption for American citizens from the authorization to use the military to indefinitely detain people without charge or trial (section 1031 of the bill). So, the result is that, under the bill, the military has the power to indefinitely imprison American citizens, but it does not have to use its power unless ordered to do so.

But you don’t have to believe us. Instead, read what one of the bill’s sponsors, Sen. Lindsey Graham said about it on the Senate floor: “1031, the statement of authority to detain, does apply to American citizens and it designates the world as the battlefield, including the homeland.”

http://www.infowars.com/the-indefinite-detention-bill-does-apply-to-american-citizens-on-u-s-soil/

In fact, here's what the traitorous Republican Senator Lindsey Graham (a co-sponsor of the bill) had to say re: the indefinite detainment of American citizens by the military without no due process whatsoever:

“It is not unfair to make an American citizen account for the fact that they decided to help Al Qaeda to kill us all and hold them as long as it takes to find intelligence about what may be coming next,” remarked Graham. “And when they say, ‘I want my lawyer,’ you tell them, ‘Shut up. You don’t get a lawyer.’”

http://www.infowars.com/indefinite-detention-bill-heads-to-obamas-desk/

In other words...

"Fvck the 5th Amendment."

The equally traitorous Republican Senator John McCain (also a co-sponsor) has backed his comrade up:

Senator McCain also told Rand Paul during a hearing on the bill that American citizens could be declared an enemy combatant, sent to Guantanamo Bay and detained indefinitely, “no matter who they are.”

http://www.infowars.com/indefinite-detention-bill-heads-to-obamas-desk/

Another co-sponsor of the legislation that directly violates every American's Constitutional 5th Amendment right to due process - regardless of the "capital, or otherwise infamous crime" - is the traitor and Democrat Senator Carl Levine, who is on record as stating it was President Obama himself that insisted he has the right to capture, detain, and even kill American citizens with no due process at all:

“The language which precluded the application of Section 1031 to American citizens was in the bill that we originally approved…and the administration asked us to remove the language which says that U.S. citizens and lawful residents would not be subject to this section."

That was the language - "that U.S. citizens and lawful residents would not be subject to this section" - the president of the United Socialist State of America demanded be removed...

...or he would veto the entire bill whose fundamental purpose, by the way, is simply to fund the Department of Defense until September 30, 2012.

When the Senate passes the bill and after the president signs it...

...the 5th Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America will, in effect, have been altered illegally by the very citizens who swore an oath to uphold it against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

That...

...is treason.


These words have never been more true:


Social democrats and neoconservatives share the same political philosophy: statism at home and war abroad.


Murray Rothbard


BTW: for the ignorant and/or the bigotly biased...

...when you're at sea and an emergency develops, hoisting Old Glory upside down literally telegraphs a SOS to those who see it.

http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRkuDtPHTwFwo4gnAxBDgBGcFdM354nfdWdN1NZZmbPPegOOZJS​

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