THURSDAY, JANUARY 05, 2012
POLITICAL PISTACHIO
By Douglas V. Gibbs
For weeks a co-worker and I have been discussing the National Defense Authorization bill. He's a little on the loony side and said that the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) would make the United States a police state. I disagreed with him, assuring him that I had read the bill, and there were provisions in it designed to protect the average citizen. On and on he kept sounding more and more like an Occupy Wall Street nut, and more and more I tried to assure him the NDAA was harmless. . . as long as those provisions remained in place.
Granted, I was not fond of the bill. After reading it, I told him it was more than I preferred. But I wanted to assure him there was enough in the way of protective provisions to ensure that just any citizen couldn't be detained for made up reasons, or that they could be detained without due process.
I failed to calculate Obama into my opinion.
Obama has played to the media that he signed the bill with a hesitant hand, saying that he didn't agree with everything in the bill. Yet, before he was willing to sign it, Barack Hussein Obama demanded that all of the provisions that protected the average American citizen from indefinite detainment be removed.
Congress obliged.
Obama signed the bill on New Years Eve, and the NDAA is now in force.
As signed, the NDAA now allows the military, under the guise of the war on terror, to detain "anybody" for absolutely no reason whatsoever. The NDAA allows them to do this without even having to charge you. I have done my defending of the PATRIOT Act, too, but this thing makes the PATRIOT Act look like child's play. If you thought the PATRIOT Act was bad, the NDAA is far worse.
No wonder my buddy thinks we've become a police state.
This is liberalism (Republicans were in on this thing too, by the way - but we know there is a whole host of progressives in the GOP). This is the way the Left likes it. This is total authoritarianism.
They say they have to suspect you of terrorism. But how many times have we heard democrats compare conservatives, the Tea Party folks, or even gun owners to terrorists? All they have to do is tweak their definitions, and they could throw in jail anyone that disagrees with them!
I am not saying they "will" - I am saying that with this thing in place they "can."
Obama has assured us that he will never use this thing for such purposes.
First of all, I think he is itching to use it. Second, if we take him at his word, then why sign the damn thing? Why allow some freak in the future more nuttier than Obama to have this thing at his fingertips?
The NDAA makes the TSA crap at the airports look like a walk in the park.
Here's the thing about only being able to use the NDAA if they suspect you of terrorism. . . They don't have to prove it. They don't have to have any evidence. They don't have to charge you. They don't have to have anything except a sentence that comes out of their mouths that includes the word "terrorist."
No due process. They can put you in jail, throw your right to a lawyer out the window, throw habeas corpus out the window, and if anyone complains, they can go after them too, simply with the explanation that the complaining party must be a terrorist too.
Sound far fetched? It's happened before in other countries, and every time they masked it with "good intentions," and "for the good of the country."
Where is the anti-war, anti-Bush, anti-PATRIOT Act folks now? Why aren't they screaming about this? Liberals only hate something they think is authoritarian if it isn't their guy? Is that it?
I have never seen a larger assault against our civil rights, and the civil rights folks are nowhere to be seen.
The bill has funding attached to it. In other words, if Obama didn't sign it, the military would not have been funded. But he wasn't as reluctant as he claims. Like I said, Obama asked for all of the protections to be removed!
What is worse is practically nobody stood up against this thing. They didn't want to be pegged with being unwilling to fund the military, so they signed off, and then went on Christmas Vacation. Nobody said anything against this sinister bill. Nobody! Neither Democrat, nor Republican. They all more or less said "yea," and then scrammed.
Unbelievable.
-- Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary
The NDAA's Historic Assault on American Liberty - Jonathan Turley
The IRS & DOJ Are Grabbing New Powers in the Hunt for Revenue- Business insider
Obama Demanded NDAA Include Americans for Indefinite Detainment - Digital Journal