Come on, guys, don't be soon bouton-ish "doom & gloom".
Think happy thoughts.
Have a positive at ude.
God won't let bad things happen to His favorite country.
Isn't that what most conspiracies are? Perhaps the small difference being that Al Awalaki didn't have a undercover informant buying him the supplies and providing him with strategic information...still, Al Awalaki went well beyond that...had he been tried he would have been convicted...
Is that a serious question Scott? As soon as drones start killing suspected terrorists in the US we'll talk..
The Nazi shouldn't have killed their opponents, that was short-sighted...they should have had the SS throw them in jail and then tried them in a court of opinion by calling them immigrants, hippies (opppps gipsies) and socialists (opppps....Communists)
Yes it's a serious question. If we aren't willing to put our men in harm's way to kill a US citizen in Yemen, why would we put them in harm's way anywhere else?
We have a President who does what he very rarely does, issues a signing statement, saying he will ignore a law which compels him to do something he never asked to do...and 90% of the assholes who voted for it will go through the 2012 election unscathed....but it's all Obama...
That Occam's razor was crossed long before DAT or have you forgotten Jose Padilla? Without consequence, we have let the MIC rendition, indefinitely detain, torture and murder innocent civilians in other countries...now were concerned because they've shifted their focus inward? Too en late...
For US Citizens, permanent residents, and non-citizen non-resident people captured within the United States, the law specifically (1021e) says that it does not affect the state of the law. So courts will continue to look to the state of the law prior to the NDAA to determine questions about US Citizens.
For non-US-Citizens, the statutory language is broader. This reflects nothing more than a codification of the "covered by" creep that the courts have already affirmed over and over again. It does not go beyond what the courts have already held. In other words, anyone who could be detained (and approved by a court) before the NDAA can be detained afterwards, and anyone who could not be detained before cannot be detained afterwards.
The original AUMF basically applied to people who committed 9/11, belonged to organizations that committed 9/11, or belonged to organizations that aided those who committed 9/11. The new law (section 1021) replaces all that with "al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces." Since the new resolution makes the old resolution more specific (rather than less), it is hard to see where creep could come from. Both al-Queda and the Taliban clearly were covered under the old AUMF, so the only part in question is is "associated forces." But that doesn't seem any vaguer than the previous resolution, which didn't even specify the major forces at all. A force "associated" with al-Qaeda or the Taliban easily fit under the previous court's interpretation of the AUMF.
In fact, the language actually narrows the DC Circuit's interpretation. The DC Circuit used the term "knowingly supported" in its interpretation (with no requirement of that support being substantial); this legislation now requires that this support be substantial. Since this is a refinement, there is no way that a court could rule out the "substantial" requirement out of the statute.
The original AUMF could have been sunset. But the original AUMF still applies even if the actual people responsible for 9/11 are gone, since it also applies to anyone in any organization who was responsible for 9/11 (or aided those responsible). So it doesn't appear that the AUMF has the graceful sunset.
The one way that this bill could have expanded authority is if the entire current DC Circuit (and Supreme Court) retires, and is replaced by judges/justices who dramatically scale down their original interpretation of the AUMF. That just doesn't seem to be a realistic prospect though. Ultimately, while the statutory language has indeed been broadened, it seems that this will have little to no practical effect, in that anyone eligible for detention now was almost certainly eligible for detention before.
well then, why didn't we try to when we had the chance?
yeah, I'm concerned. why aren't you?
The PATRIOT Act’s material support provisions allow our government to criminalize speech and repress political dissent, a frontal assault on the First Amendment. And with material support cases grounded in associational guilt, the First Amendment is also eroding from its figurative sides.
The NDAA would expand those assaults by eliminating the need to prosecute. In the hands of a president, attorney general, US attorney, or even, potentially, state or local prosecutors willing to use their powers for political purposes, it offers the legal authority for severe repression.
covered persons” subject to potential military detention “any person who has committed a belligerent act….” What, exactly, is a belligerent act? “Hostile” and “aggressive” are synonyms, and while the term has an established (though not entirely defined) meaning in the context of international war, its precise meaning in the context of the NDAA remains unspecified.
Two weeks ago, several Occupy sites on the west coast shut down a series of ports in coordinated acts of non-violent direct action. Were a foreign country to blockade our ports, it would certainly cons ute a “belligerent act” under the laws of war.
But what if it’s US citizens who conduct the blockade? What’s the answer then? That’s the point: no one knows. Any assurances that future officials will not apply these dangerously overbroad terms to US citizens is grounded in conjecture. Wishful thinking is a poor subs ute for the thoughtful deliberation Congress should undertake when toying with powers of such potentially sweeping scope.
Ironically, groups most likely at risk for military detention represent diverse interests: the Occupy movement has been addressed as a terror threat by London police and various critics in the United States, and Tea Party groups have raised concerns about counterterrorism scrutiny of militia movements [and Ron Paul supporters].
http://my.firedoglake.com/shahidbutt...dead-of-night/
http://my.firedoglake.com/shahidbutt...dead-of-night/
Come on, guys, don't be soon bouton-ish "doom & gloom".
Think happy thoughts.
Have a positive at ude.
God won't let bad things happen to His favorite country.
only one of a potpourri of offenses against liberty, I'm afraid
it remains to be seen whether it is the most egregious. Obama might be re-elected.
signed by Obama:
http://www.spurstalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=188936
more continuity, Congress asleep at the tiller:
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/201...s-in-the-dark/A Senate staffer was tasked two years ago with compiling reports for a subcommittee about the number of times annually the Justice Department employed a covert internet and telephone surveillance method known as pen register and trap-and-trace capturing.
But the records, which the Justice Department is required to forward to Congress annually, were nowhere in sight.
That’s because the Justice Department was not following the law and had not provided Congress with the material at least for years 2004 to 2008. On the flip side, Congress was not exercising its watchdog role, thus enabling the Justice Department to skirt any oversight whatsoever on an increasingly used surveillance method that does not require court warrants, according to Justice Department do ents obtained via the Freedom of Information Act.
The mishap is just one piece of an ever-growing disconnect between Americans’ privacy interests, and a Congress seemingly uncommitted to protecting those interests.
Pen registers obtain non-content information of outbound telephone and internet communications, such as phone numbers dialed, and the sender and recipient (and sometimes subject line) of an e-mail message. A trap-and-trace acquires the same information, but for inbound communications to a target.
The reports, recently posted on Justice Department website, chronicle a powerful surveillance tool undertaken tens of thousands of times annually by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Drug Enforcement Agency, the Marshals Service and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.
The reports show that, from 2004 to 2008, the number of times this wiretapping method was employed nearly doubled, from 10,885 to 21,152. Judges sign off on these telco orders when the authorities say the information is relevant to an investigation. No probable cause that the target committed a crime — the warrant standard — is necessary.
The Justice Department, beginning in late 2010, has only published the reports from 2004 to 2009, the year it obtained 23,895 judicial orders to conduct such surveillance. It did not immediately comment on whether the 2010 and 2011 reports have been compiled and sent to Congress, or explain why the mishap occurred.
Internet security researcher Christopher Soghoian recently obtained e-mails via a two-year FOIA process confirm for the first time that Congress was left out of the loop for at least the years 2004 to 2008. Using FOIA, he and others have crowbarred from the Justice Department the reports from 1999 to 2009.
“This is an important surveillance tool,” Soghoian said in a telephone interview. “In addition to showing that DOJ is lazy and not obeying the law, the most notable thing here is that Congress was asleep at the wheel.”
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