Ron Paul: The NDAA Codifies Obama’s Power Grab

[cheguevara]

Ron Paul: The NDAA Codifies Obama’s Power Grab – OpEd
Written by: Ron Paul

http://www.eurasiareview.com/2712201...wer-grab-oped/
December 27, 2011

Little by little, in the name of fighting terrorism, our Bill of Rights is being repealed. The 4th amendment has been rendered toothless by the PATRIOT Act. No more can we truly feel secure in our persons, houses, papers, and effects when now there is an exception that fits nearly any excuse for our government to search and seize our property. Of course, the vast majority of Americans may say “I’m not a terrorist, so I have no reason to worry.” However, innocent people are wrongly accused all the time. The Bill of Rights is there precisely because the founders wanted to set a very high bar for the government to overcome in order to deprive an individual of life or liberty. To lower that bar is to endanger everyone. When the bar is low enough to include political enemies, our descent into totalitarianism is virtually assured.

The PATRIOT Act, as bad is its violation of the 4th Amendment, was just one step down the slippery slope. The recently passed National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) continues that slip toward tyranny and in fact accelerates it significantly. The main section of concern, Section 1021 of the NDAA Conference Report, does to the 5th Amendment what the PATRIOT Act does to the 4th. The 5th Amendment is about much more than the right to remain silent in the face of government questioning. It contains very basic and very critical stipulations about due process of law. The government cannot imprison a person for no reason and with no evidence presented or access to legal counsel.

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 cons utes “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?

Additionally, this legislation codifies in law for the first time authority to detain Americans that has to this point only been claimed by President Obama. According to subsection (e) of section 1021, “[n]othing in this section shall be construed to affect existing law or authorities relating to the detention of United States citizens, lawful resident aliens of the United States, or any other persons who are captured or arrested in the United States.” This means the president’s widely expanded view of his own authority to detain Americans indefinitely even on American soil is for the first time in this legislation codified in law. That should chill all of us to our cores.

The Bill of Rights has no exemptions 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.

[RandomGuy]

Dude, you are sooooo much better at this than people like Parker.

I have to give you major props for not giving in to flaming people right back for not liking RP and being mean about it, myself included.

This is an essay that I think most people left and right in this forum would agree on.

, I almost want to re-think Mr. Paul, but for the totality of his belief system. He certainly strikes a chord in a lot of people.

NDAA is a flaming pile of a law. I am deeply embarrassed that my government decided it was worthy of us.

[Nbadan]

NDAA is a flaming pile of a law. I am deeply embarrassed that my government decided it was worthy of us.

What are you going to do about it? Help vote out the Senators and Congressmen who wrote the law, debated it in committee, and voted for i... maybe? Very unlikely....in fact, I will venture to guess that if we remain in the status quo, very likely, over 90% of the representatives who voted to grant the executive branch more power with no oversight will be re-elected in 2012....

An even more troubling aspect to this is that the US government already held an American - Jose Padilla, without habeus corpus rights for years and except for a few 'extremists' voices that decried this violation of every American's cons utional rights, myself among them, nobody seemed to mind that the Bush Administration was ignoring whatever rights and laws it did not agree with to fight our war on terror..

[Nbadan]

This is not to say that NDAA isn't a flaming pile of dog ....it is, but maybe we should have drawn our ideological line in the sand back when it was first being violated ...our silence then gave rise to where we are today

[Nbadan]

Obama’s Power Grab

Ron Paul is wacko.....Obama never asked for this...

[Nbadan]

Paul did not vote for or against NDAA....what gives him the right to complain?

TX 1 Rep. Louie Gohmert Republican Yea
TX 2 Rep. Ted Poe Republican Yea
TX 3 Rep. Samuel Robert 'Sam' Johnson Republican Yea
TX 4 Rep. Ralph Moody Hall Republican Yea
TX 5 Rep. Jeb Hensarling Republican Yea
TX 6 Rep. Joe Linus Barton Republican Yea
TX 7 Rep. John A. Culberson Republican Yea
TX 8 Rep. Kevin P. Brady Republican Yea
TX 9 Rep. Al Green Democratic Yea
TX 10 Rep. Michael T. McCaul Republican Yea
TX 11 Rep. K. Michael 'Mike' Conaway Republican Yea
TX 12 Rep. Kay Granger Republican Yea
TX 13 Rep. William M. 'Mac' Thornberry Republican Yea
TX 14 Rep. Ronald Ernest 'Ron' Paul Republican Did Not Vote
TX 15 Rep. Rubén E. Hinojosa Sr. Democratic Nay
TX 16 Rep. Silvestre 'Silver' Reyes Democratic Yea
TX 17 Rep. Bill Flores Republican Yea
TX 18 Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee Democratic Yea
TX 19 Rep. Randy Neugebauer Republican Yea
TX 20 Rep. Charles A. 'Charlie' Gonzalez Democratic Yea
TX 21 Rep. Lamar S. Smith Republican Yea
TX 22 Rep. Pete Olson Republican Yea
TX 23 Rep. Francisco R. 'Quico' Canseco Republican Yea
TX 24 Rep. Kenny E. Marchant Republican Yea
TX 25 Rep. Lloyd A. Doggett Democratic Yea
TX 26 Rep. Michael C. Burgess Republican Nay
TX 27 Rep. R. Blake Farenthold Republican Yea
TX 28 Rep. Henry Cuellar Democratic Yea
TX 29 Rep. Raymond Eugene 'Gene' Green Democratic Yea
TX 30 Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson Democratic Did Not Vote
TX 31 Rep. John R. Carter Republican Yea
TX 32 Rep. Peter A. 'Pete' Sessions Republican Yea

http://www.votesmart.org/bill/votes/37467

[Bill_Brasky]

Ugh....we really need to clean house with this piece of congress.....

[hater]

this and the "Stop Internet Piracy" bull is the worst thing to come out of the Obama administration by far. It pretty much gives the administration a failing grade IMO

I have to agree with wacko paul, this is fascism

[cheguevara]

In eroding civil liberties, Barack Obama finishes what George Bush began
http://www.nola.com/opinions/index.s..._what_geo.html

Jim Cole, The Associated Press

In this July 1 file photo, Republican presidential candidate, Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas campaigns in Freedom, N.H. Paul says he will retire from Congress when his term runs out in 2012 and will focus on his campaign for president.
In these skittish times only the nutty fringe would advocate a return to the rule of law.

Paul, at 76, is said to be the candidate of the young and idealistic, who, four years ago, helped propel Barack Obama into the White House. Boy, did he have them fooled. Not only did he fail to reverse the repressive drift of the George W. Bush administration, but he has escalated it.

We have now arrived at the state where an American citizen may be arrested on American soil and held without trial indefinitely. Obama blithely tags an American citizen as a terrorist sympathizer and has him taken out by drone in a foreign country. The police-state refinements of the Bush years -- the warrantless wiretaps and e-mail searches, for instance -- remain in place. Guantanamo Bay, which was supposed to be an early casualty of the Obama administration, continues its grisly work.

This administration supposedly renounced torture, but it is hard to think of any other word for the cruelties inflicted on Pfc Bradley Manning since he was arrested for allegedly providing Julian Assange of Wikileaks with classified material, including video of a helicopter crew hollering in delight while mowing down civilians in Iraq.

None of the perpetrators of what looks like an atrocity faced any consequences, but Manning was confined for 23 hours a day in a tiny cell, often naked, and awakened every five minutes. This was too much for State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley, who resigned after calling Manning's treatment "counterproductive and stupid."

Presiding over Manning's preliminary hearing last week was Army Reserve Lt. Col. Paul Almanza, who in civilian life works as a prosecutor for the Justice Department. Since Assange is under investigation by the department, which would presumably not hesitate to lean on Manning for a little dirt, it does not take a legal scholar of, say, Obama's stature, to see grounds for recusal in this set-up.

Almanza refused to budge, however, and is now weighing whether he should recommend a court martial. There is little room for doubt on that score, or, indeed, whether Manning will be convicted. Obama has already publicly declared Manning "broke the law," and it is not regarded as a wise career move for army officers to gainsay their commander in chief.

Manning's security breach is alleged to have put lives at risk, but there is no evidence of any harm done, beyond the embarrassment suffered by inept and secretive officialdom. Indeed, the public is surely en led to know of the outrages committed in its name, and no less an authority than Daniel Ellsberg of Pentagon Papers fame regards Manning as a whistle-blowing hero. He'll probably get life for that.

Meanwhile, the latest assault on American liberties arrives with the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act, which makes a mockery once and for all of any notion that the cowboys rode off into the sunset with Bush. In the land of the free these days "any person who was part of or substantially supported al-Qaida, the Taliban or associated forces" may now be detained "without trial until the end of hostilities." The way things are going in Afghanistan and the Middle East, it might as well say until the end of time.
We are abandoning due process out of fear of a danger that is largely illusory. American and British intelligence services say al Qaida poses little threat to America now that Osama bin Laden has been liquidated in Pakistan and drones have taken care of several more of its commanders. That Anwar al-Awlaki, assassinated in Yemen three months ago, was an American citizen was evidently jake with Obama.

Ron Paul is given no chance, but this time we need not fear that the Republican nominee will want to dismantle the Bill of Rights. That job has been done.

[cheguevara]

Dude, you are sooooo much better at this than people like Parker.

I have to give you major props for not giving in to flaming people right back for not liking RP and being mean about it, myself included.

This is an essay that I think most people left and right in this forum would agree on.

, I almost want to re-think Mr. Paul, but for the totality of his belief system. He certainly strikes a chord in a lot of people.

NDAA is a flaming pile of a law. I am deeply embarrassed that my government decided it was worthy of us.

No reason to flame anyone. We all stuck in this mess and unfortunately the ppl that think they have it all figured out are the most confused.

its just time for ppl to wake up

[hater]

None of the perpetrators of what looks like an atrocity faced any consequences, but Manning was confined for 23 hours a day in a tiny cell, often naked, and awakened every five minutes. This was too much for State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley, who resigned after calling Manning's treatment "counterproductive and stupid."

Presiding over Manning's preliminary hearing last week was Army Reserve Lt. Col. Paul Almanza, who in civilian life works as a prosecutor for the Justice Department. Since Assange is under investigation by the department, which would presumably not hesitate to lean on Manning for a little dirt, it does not take a legal scholar of, say, Obama's stature, to see grounds for recusal in this set-up.

That's what I'm talking about. They are torturing and treating a US soldier who exposed American murders like a goddam animal.

Meanwhile, they are allowing the Yemen leader, who mass murdered his own pleople to come to get medical treatment and probably asylum.

[Winehole23]

This is not to say that NDAA isn't a flaming pile of dog ....it is, but maybe we should have drawn our ideological line in the sand back when it was first being violated ...our silence then gave rise to where we are today

maybe you had wax in your ears. there was plenty of complaining, back then.

[Winehole23]

Ron Paul is wacko.....Obama never asked for this...

then maybe he shouldn't sign it