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Lindsey Graham: White House Mulling Indefinite Detention
The White House is considering endorsing a law that would allow the indefinite detention of some alleged terrorists without trial as part of efforts to break a logjam with Congress over President Barack Obama's plans to close the Guantanamo Bay prison, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said Monday.
Lindsey Graham says the White House now seems open to a new law to lay out the standards for open-ended imprisonment. (Photo: AP)
Last summer, White House officials said they had ruled out seeking a
"preventive detention" statute as a way to deal with anti-terror
detainees, saying the administration would hold any Guantanamo
prisoners brought to the U.S. in criminal courts or under the general
"law of war" principles permitting detention of enemy combatants.
However, speaking at a news conference in Greenville, S.C. Monday, Graham said the White House now seems open to a new law to lay out the standards for open-ended imprisonment of those alleged to be members of or fighters for Al Qaeda or the Taliban.
"We're beginning to look at the idea we need to change our laws come up with better guidance" for judges handling cases of enemy combatants, Graham said. "I've been talking to the administration for the last couple of days. I'm encouraged that we're going to sit down and do some of the hard things we haven't done as a nation after Sept. 11."
"I think we need to change our laws to give our judges better guidance- rules of the road," Graham said. "We need a statute to deal with that."
Asked whether the White House is again considering a preventive detention statute, spokesman Ben LaBolt said: "Senator Graham has expressed interest in habeas reform and other policy ideas. We will review constructive proposals from Senator Graham and other Members of Congress that are consistent with the national security imperative that we close Guantanamo and ensure the swift and certain justice the families of victims have long deserved."
Graham also suggested that administration officials who recently completed the review of all prisoners at Guantanamo believe that a new law would be a better way to keep those inmates locked up if they are transferred to the U.S.
"I think the Obama administration, after they looked at the cases at Guantanamo Bay, understands the need for a statute like that exists," he said.
Taken as a whole, Graham's comments appeared to sketch the outlines of a potential overarching deal to resolve most of the issues surrounding Guantanamo Bay. Confirming earlier reports, he said he is in discussions with the White House about legislation he has proposed to force a trial for alleged September 11 plotters like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed out of civilian courts. His proposal failed on a 54-45 vote last November, but congressional sources say the White House has expressed concern that it might not prevail if the legislation is put forward again.
While Graham has long favored closing Guantanamo, he said Monday that his support for doing so is contingent on a new law to govern the detention of those the government wants to keep in custody outside the criminal justice system. He also said that, with such a statute in place, he could support Obama's plan to convert a state prison in Illinois to a federal facility for former Guantanamo inmates.
"I think Thomson, Ill., in the hands of the military, could become a secure location," he said. "My view is we can start to close Guantanamo only after we reform our laws."
Civil liberties advocates and many who back Obama's effort to close Guantanamo have opposed a preventive detention law as a departure from the tradition of prosecuting and punishing individuals for specific crimes. Some critics have also expressed worries that such a law would be hard to limit and could be extended well beyond Al Qaeda operatives.
Asked why the administration had become more open to a detention statute, Graham cited recent court rulings and comments by several federal judges who said the legal standards for detaining enemy prisoners are too vague.
"The judges are just absolutely beside themselves," Graham said. "I think that is something new the administration is listening to - the judiciary.... I do believe there is a willingness by some in the administration to sit down and reform our habeas statutes."
Some human rights advocates said Monday that they didn't doubt Graham had discussed a detention statute with the White House, but were skeptical that officials there are actively considering it. "I'm sure that that's what Sen. Graham thinks [but] I don't have any reason to think the administration has changed its view on this. The president was quite clear he does not want to legislate a system of preventative detention," said Elisa Massimino of Human Rights First. "In both private conversations and in public, the attorney general and other people in the administration said they're committed to driving the people detained without charge to zero. I think that would be inconsistent with a pledge to do that."
Massimino also said Graham and others appeared to be trying "hold hostage" the 9/11-related cases in order to achieve other legislative goals.
Graham did not say explicitly whether the law under discussion with the White House would cover only the men currently detained at Guantanamo Bay or others who might be captured in the future.
Tom Malinowski of Human Rights Watch suggested that a law allowING future detentions would be of the greatest concern.
"If they are in fact considering preventive detention legislation today, I think it would be a mistake both substantively and politically," Malinowski said. "Legislating preventive detention for the future would turn the Guantanamo anomaly into a permanent legal norm. It would give every future president an authority that hasn't existed since the Alien and Sedition Acts - the authority to detain people without trial not because they were captured on a military battlefield but because are considered a threat to national security. There is no way to write that law (especially in this Congress) to prevent a less scrupulous president from abusing such authority in a moment of national crisis."
At least four federal court judges handling cases in which Guantanamo inmates challenged their detention have complained recently that the courts and the prisoners have no clear understanding of the legal standards to apply.
"It is unfortunate, in my view, that the Legislative Branch of the government, and the Executive Branch, have not moved more strongly to provide uniform, clear rules and laws for handling these cases," Judge Thomas Hogan said at a hearing in December.
"It's an honor to have the responsibility of blazing the trail in determining how justice should be administered in these cases," Judge Ricardo Urbina said last month in an interview with ProPublica. "By the same token, it's also at times frustrating when not all the rules are clear and not all the specifics of how a matter should be dealt with are before us."
- Posted in
51 Comments so far
Show Allbuilding 7...
indeed
Actually, small, scattered fires can melt reinforced steel. I trust my government.
;-)
Nano-thermite = Smoking Gun
The planning and prepping occuring under Clinton with the operation executed by BushCo. http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=17624
Is Cheney for it? Then the White House is probably for it.
Judges are against this, but then, who needs judges any more -- just label and lock them up as terrorists. Stick them in solitary confinement till they go mad. Torture them. After all they are The Enemy, and not like us. Not quite human. You, know, one of Them.
Hey think we could call Senator Graham a terrorist -- he certainly is to the Bill of Rights?
Gary
"We buy our way out of jail but we can't buy freedom,
We buy a lot of clothes when we don't really need them,
Things we buy to cover up what's inside."
-- Kanye West
God, I would love to see Lindsey Graham and his fellow Patriot Act'ers be the first jailed under an "unlimited detention" act.
I had a vision of the Gitmo inmates stepping out of their cells, and all of the members of Congress stepping into the cells, and the cell doors closing...
I would feel safer...
Various laws for various human beings? Another step toward Tyranny.
And Habeas Corpus reform and adjustments? The principle of Habeas Corpus has been the bedrock of the justice system since the mid-1200's for English-speaking peoples, and then was adopted as a foundational principle of law by other nations.
Again, ... one law for this group; another for that one; and another for that one; ...
I love the names too. THE TERRORISTS, ENEMY COMBATANTS, INSURGENTS treated differently than regular army combat soldiers because it really isn't a formalized war. Ohhhh.
It's informal warfare. Seems the weapons are the same; those fighting each other suffer the same wounds and deaths, with red-blood spilling with essentially the same DNA as the other feller.
The minds that govern us are becoming more and more twisted and irrational and are filled with the empty spaces of loopholes.
What an insane, terrible and brutal ride.
/cm
Good comment cm.
It's "informal" war because we did not legally declare an illegal invasion and occupation against a specific enemy. We are winging it. So because it is illegal and poorly defined from the get-go, the rules of war do not apply. Lawless before, lawless during.
It's habeas corpus except when it's not. You won't know when it applies and when it doesn't because someone decides in advance whether you are guilty and they don't have to explain. The public allows this because they assume applies to Muslims only. This type of acceptance of inhumanity flows from our racist heritage, our ability to accept injustice if we feel exempt. I fear we are in for a shock as these standards are more widely applied domestically.
It is with a river of grief I have to say that by standards of international law, we have become the most out-of-control and violent country on earth.
Joe
When will our Fascist Dictatorships get to the "preventive execution" statutes?
If you are not 'with' the criminal elite you are dead, eh?
-"a law that would allow the indefinite detention of some alleged terrorists without trial as part of efforts to break a logjam with Congress over President Barack Obama's plans to close the Guantanamo Bay prison"
Let's break this down a bit for the "Obamabots":
in exchange for the senate "allowing" Obama to keep his year old promise to swiftly close one of his torture camps, the most famous one, the one at Guantanamo (which may or may not include the recently discovered "Camp No"), Obama will accept a new law that vitiates the concepts of habeus corpus, innocent until proven guilty, right to face your accuser, etc.
Chicago School:"You've got to push him to do the right thing".Isn't this what you do with kids?
Oath of office:"Yeah,yeah whatever but they should change one word;change Constitution to business and buddies".
Rule of law:just for anybody we say and we will change words to reflect that.Tony
perhaps 'Close Guantanamo' is too vague...
let these incarcerated people out and help them go home...
Just the latest perversion of justice in the FSA.
Humbaba:
Obama has already given himself permission to pre-emptively assassinate folks not on domestic soil. The extension to Amercians on American soil is just the next work of freedom and justice to be gifted to the terrorized masses.
Yesterday I actually got a hardcore right-wing capitalist to admit we live in a Fascist country. For him and I to agree on ANYTHING, chills me to the bone and just shows how far we have fallen.
Bet your "friend" would not have agreed with you when GWB was prez, even though Obama is following in his predecessors footsteps. He seems like one of those guys that always roots for the (Republican) home team.
I can at least hope he is waking up but I am making progress. I asked him 3 simple questions.
1)Does capitalism require continual growth to work. A: Yes
2) What happens to a bacterial colony in a petri dish when it reaches the confines of the conatiner? A: most organisms will die off
3) Is the earth not a finite vessel? A: begrudginly... yes...
You could just about see the light snap on but alas his imperial conditoning was too strong to break the hold of the kool aid.
That is a wonderful analogy. I'll have to use it sometime.
Yet another attempt to subvert our Constitution. Do many of us Americans have any inkling of the degree to which our rights have been taken away in the name of the 'War' on Terror? Do we know the huge price we are paying for little real protection?
Logic does not support the decimation of this incredible document. The U.S. lost 3,000 people in the Twin Towers assault in 2001; approximately 300 Marines in the Beirut attack in 1983; and 270 lives with the downing of Pan Am flight 103 in 1988; not included here are attacks in which death tolls were less than 75.
These 3 major attacks have a total death toll of 3,570. So, will "W", Obama, Cheney, Petraeus, the Pentagon, Congress, Lindsey Graham, et al. please explain to us why we are responding to this death toll with overkill in Iraq, Yemen, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Palestine ( via Israel)?
I'm not trying to minimize the trauma caused by the attacks mentioned above-- but why is my country over-maximizing them? And why is it making up phony, unnecessary,
unconstitutional laws in the name of protecting us, when those laws simply do NOT do that? I don't want to be protected at the expense of my civil liberties and rights.
Something more is going on with all this overreaction to terrorism. Maybe it is what Hillary Clinton in the 1990s referred to a "vast right-wing conspiracy" (of which she now seems to be a part). Or maybe Ahmadinejad makes the correct call: the U.S. has become a "miltary [/corporate] dictatorship", i.e. a fascist state.
"why is my country over-maximizing them? And why is it making up phony, unnecessary, unconstitutional laws in the name of protecting us, when those laws simply do NOT do that?"
Because it is not your country any more it is theirs or rather it belongs, as in "it is owned by" the corporations they serve.
Those corporations have the legal status of people, but are infinitely bigger, with millions of people slaving for them, yes, the word is slaving because most are kept in debt working for a fiat currency and these corporations must keep growing and they never can die, they have bought and paid for or at least have compromised anyone who is allowed to have any power in what you wrongly believe is your country.
You are left to pretend that you can serve your country or what you believe in, but at the end of the day you either serve them, stay in stuppor of self delusion, as most Americans do, or you take your country back, and then you are a terrorist because they make the lists and define the terms.... with us or against us.
And that is why they need to change the laws, It has nothing to do with 19 Arabs with box cutters, collapsing steel and concrete or any other Hollywood style fairy tales that you are treated to in order to condition you to be scared and angry. That is all to make you passive, blind, and stupid.
Are you stupid or do you want your country back? It's up to you!
It is simply unbelievable how ready Americans are go give up their freedom for security.
Wasn't if Jefferson who said something like the following.
THOSE WILLING TO SURRENDER LIBERTY FOR SECURITY WILL GET NEITHER.
Where are the real conservatives who should be defending our Constitution?
Am I afraid of terrorists? NO! Am I afraid of politicians who say they want to protect me? Absolutely!
Jim Shea
That quote is usually attributed to Franklin.
If only we could jail the freedom hating, liberty hating, justice hating; lying, thieving, murdering scum that controls the republican party, indefinity, it would be something worth discussing.
The world will never forget: the crimes and atrocities committed by the republicans in the Bush administration!
Ya gotta include the Democrats too; they are just as bad if not worse.
Indefinite detention without a trial? A slippery slope, especially for those of us who remember the horrors of the McCarthy period.
The horrors of the McCarthy period? How about the horrors of the Stalin period? I don't think even McCarthy went so far as advocating what our so-called representatives in Congress and The White House are cooking up for us.
The detention of ANYONE, citizen or enemy combatant, is subject to the laws and the Constitution. The idea of creating a law that lends "legality" to something that has previously been illegal (such as letting telephone companies off the hook for assisting the government in illegal wiretapping) is UNCONSTITUTIONAL. Isn't it just the opposite of the "Ex Poste Facto" clause in the Constitution, which makes it unconstitutional to create a law making something illegal, after the fact, then putting someone on trial for something that wasn't illegal when they did it? Committing a crime is STILL committing a crime, even if, after you've done it, the law is changed to allow it _after_ the change.
"a new law would be a better way to keep those inmates locked up"
precisely my thought: ex post facto.
let's look at the contradictions: obama says that he wants to read miranda rights to prisoners like the underwear bomber (u.b.), but assures us that in the event he were acquitted, he would still be subject to military detention. so, we are to respect miranda but ignore double jeopardy? and the right to a fair trial is abridged each time obama or his minions rush to the media to imbue potential jurors with the certainty that u.b. and k.s.m. are guilty, the latter destined to die at our hands, irrespective of the course his judicial process takes. on the other hand, republicans say that u.b. has to go to military court, but they would surely gag on the notion that we would release him, a war prisoner, when the war against terror ends, or after reaching a treaty ending our hostilies with the taiban. yet, releasing prisoners upon war's end is what a country does after attributing warrior status to a captive. posturing again, attorney general holder says that those captured on american soil deserve a trial, but if those like the u.b. attack us under the cloak of civiliandom, what rights do they really have? military tradition in most western countries permits the hanging of those who travel as civilians in order to infiltrate a country and attack its military targets. traveling under such cover to attack civilian targets like commercial airlines would then, well, merit more than death, were there such a thing. no one, for instance, ever labelled the redcoats war criminals for their hanging nathan hale on the fifth of june, 1776. disguised as a schoolteacher, hale merely stuffed military messages into his boots and crossed british lines to deliver them to washington. and, in 1943, roosevelt hanged nearly a dozen germans, who disembarked from u-boats before creeping upon our eastern shores during the dead of night; all were english speaking and disguised as american civilians. no one yet has called their executions war crimes. i'll finish my thoughts in the next entry.
I get your point about the UB, but surely under civilian law he is either innocent or guilty, the same as any other social delinquent who damages the society around him for whatever motive. Whether someone calls it a War on "whatever" does not make it a war. So "illegal combatant" as a term does not make any sense, because a non war is defined as a war. Get it?
And the point is most of the people confined at Guantanamo, are and were guilty of nothing and after years of torture, if they hate America it is for very good reason, never the less if their hatred is expressed in acts of aggression once released then you have something to incarcerate them for. But attempting to put them on trial for what you managed to extract from them and others through illegal imprisonment and torture, is ridiculous.
Call it what you like, but not justice, or in any way protecting the interests of American people. Because if you do it to these innocent people today, you will be doing it to each other tomorrow.
i agree with almost everything you have said. we differ inasmuch as i contend that the underwear bomber is a combatant against the united states. he has actually been groomed by foreign forces to attack this country. he is not a citizen here. to my mind, the question then becomes how to classify him: is he a mere prisoner of war, or do we add the tag of war criminal, since he, disguised as a civilian, tried to kill american civilians on american soil? the nature of this new war defies the traditional classifications of prisoners, so i can see how the yoos of the world could exploit this confusion to excuse american war crimes. i look at history for guidance, remembering that hitler threatened to execute british pilots who firebombed civilian areas, but never made good his threats, though by the end of the war, the allies were using napalm, according to howard zinn, against smaller german cities. i believe that today's is just a different kind of war, one fought by a different kind of combatant. since the enemy is hard to define, so is success, and there is no one event that can tell us when the ending is. thus, we don't know how long to hold captives. if we give the underwear bomber the procedural protections of a federal civilian trial, the jury most likely will find him guilty and the judge sentence him to life sentence without parole. without prisoner of war status, he faces the same sentence as an american citizen would face. in a military tribunal, he could argue that the end of hostilities would require his release. this argument would hold water, unless a military nuremberg-like tribunal finds him to be a war criminal.
I’m sorry but it appears to me that you are not only confused but as crazy as they are to frame terrorism in terms of military confrontation. You might as well be one of the nuts in Tel Aviv calling what they did to Gaza a war or call a street gang of delinquents with Saturday night specials, a militia.
You are dumbly falling into a designed trap that allows the government to remove your rights and it makes no difference whether the UB was foreign or not.
The next thing you have to ask about this designer war is how these “combatants” can be quite so stupid. I would suggest that a many of billion dollars a year war needs an enemy, and if you declared war with that much money on Martians, you would find little green men somewhere. I have as much evidence as you, but in my humble opinion the UB was designed to be caught, and is no more a military operation than the idiot liquid bombers in London who had no passports, but were going to blow up plains. Look there is a sucker born every day, they just need someone to lead them, and you do not know and neither do I, who is paying his wages.
In other words just ask yourself; Who created the Taliban? Who created Al Qaeda? Do you think there are intelligence assets working inside these organizations? Do you think there was foreknowledge of 9-11 and it could have been prevented? Do you think there was any domestic and local third party involvement in the planning, execution, and subsequent whitewash investigation of the incidents?
You appear to have swallower the Bin Laden, Al Qaeda conspiracy, war on terror, "24" story line, hook line and sinker, and that is why you, as a country of idiots, are in two wars killing babies and talking tough to start a third one with Iran and your Constitution in the toilet. Use your brain and follow the money!
lucitanian: no need for the verbal pummelling. if you read my comments, you'd see that my uncertainty is only as to detention of foreign nationals and the rights they have after being arrested for attacking my country. i oppose torture, extraordinary rendition, the state secret doctrine that stops lawsuits by innocents in their tracks, and the suspension of habeas corpus for american citizens. i am simply trying to figure out for myself the best way to treat this new kind of fighter/terrorist who dresses up as a civilian so he can get the opportunity to kill airline passengers. in defense of my progressive credentials, i've spent my own money running t.v. ads calling dick cheney everything but a war criminal, and detest obama for shuddering every time cheney and his ddd daughter( size, i dunno, but i'm referring to daddy's draft deferment) grace the airways. i spoke up for palestinian rights openly in 1978, and then for gay rights in 1979, in, of all places, memphis, tennessee. i think that the u.b. will be given a life sentence if tried in a civilian court. no need to rationalize his acts, they are wrong. we cannot sacrifice americans now for the sins we committed in the past. i understand the anger foreigners feel, and it is justified. and, truth be told, american policy in the middle east will not soon change, making our war against terror an endless nightmare.
Habeas Reform? Look out my citizens, Goose-stepping Graham is about to get us all sliding down another police-state slippery slope here.
Attention Judges:
The rules are clear: Habeas Corpus means in Latin: Show me the Body. No Body, no warrant or detainment. No Warrant or detainment?, no murder charge and the suspect must be released.
You start violating this fundamental right of the citizen, on the flimsy excuse that we are in an fake, endless perpetual war, and must detain anyone deemed a national security threat, and you can kiss Freedom and Liberty and free speech goodbye.
Instead of closing Gitmo, this congress seems intent in turning the whole mainland USA into a Gitmo!
It's getting close to tar and feather time of a few Corporate Loyalists!
TJ
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." - Thomas Jefferson
By George, I think he's got it! :-)
Well said. You too Tommy.
continuing, let me say that i believe that torture and extraordinary rendition are state crimes, and that obama's de facto pardon of cheney and his ilk is beyond the pale and marks our president as the weakling he now appears to be. nearly as bad is obama's continuing to use the state secrets doctrine to terminate civil lawsuits that are clearly meritorious, such as those arising from our rendition of innocent canadians to syria for torture. awful is the fact that he has not the nerve to investigate the so far unpunished deaths of prisoners in c.i.a. custody. too afraid, he seems to be, of rattling the esprit de corps of our own death squads. but custody and rights in custody are issues separarte from those involving prisoner abuse. confusing things further is the reality that many in guantanamo are captives of the northern alliance, with whom they fought well before 9/11. perhaps there is a constitutional or equitable right for these captives to have a hearing to determine if they are enemy combatants. but, would we then find that right in every battlefield situation where we imprison an armed combatant? since time immemorial, these fighters have been held for the duration of hostilities.
Look, You are confused by people who have one tool in their box, the military hammer. Every time they use it all their friends are happy and make money and so they give money to their friends in politics. So everything becomes a “war” and is defined as a War on this or that, but once you use a term it implies other terms, just like when you start to make a little lie you need to keep on lying and it gets bigger.
You may be confused, but that is because they the people in power have deliberately blinded you with lies and delusions to use your fear and anger to serve their greed and power.
(BTW why not help your readers? Your confusion is too obvious, try to order your thoughts in paragraphs. Don't take any offence that is not meant)
RE: "Lindsey Graham: White House Mulling Indefinite Detention"
MY COMMENT: Lookout Dems...Lindsey's on the prowl! He's all 'hot and bothered'!
P.S. Is it just me, or do his eyes seem 'glazed over'? Stop burnin' the "candle" at both ends and get some shut-eye, dude!
The empire is cracking and crumbling -and from within.
Just the lightest external touch, like the bloomer bomber, is all that is needed to keep the rot going strongly.
When you posit enemy, it has to grow. There are no enemies. People who have "enemies" want to kill.
People who hit, bite, scratch, etc. other people are feral animals. Beast in life : Beast in death.
If you judge, you will be judged. There will be no judges.
Not since First Thought of this world came into being has there ever been a first to murder and get away with it, and there never will be.
As you are in the Here, so shall you be in the After.
Beautiful.
Why have enemies? It's a failure of reasoning, compassion, and wisdom.
There is not one part of the "war on terror" that you cannot parallel in terms of the "inquisition".
They invent new name to make their insanity banal. They put themselves above the law. They want to use unrestricted violence so they call it a war and they condemn anyone against them as their enemy.
Fear and ignorance are the engines of hate. And hate is the great divider that destroys those that carry it while it feeds its engines, a self perpetuating machine that will carry you all the way to hell!
Tom Malinowski of Human Rights Watch has the best understanding why the authoritarians in Congress and their desire for Orwellian "preventative detention" powers are a threat to our way of life, rights, and Constitution.
"Legislating preventive detention for the future would turn the Guantanamo anomaly into a permanent legal norm. It would give every future president an authority that hasn't existed since the Alien and Sedition Acts - the authority to detain people without trial not because they were captured on a military battlefield but because are considered a threat to national security. There is no way to write that law (especially in this Congress) to prevent a less scrupulous president from abusing such authority in a moment of national crisis."
Detaining and imprisoning individuals, both U.S. citizens and non-citizens, accused by the government of terrorism without a trial in an Orwellian netherworld of military imprisonment is a blatant and shocking violation of our Constitution.
People need to wake up and stop allowing authoritarian-minded right-wingers such Cheney, Lindsey Graham, and numerous others in the Republican Party to scare us into abandoning the vital principles of our Constitution. Jury trials, civilian courts, and following our Constitution can't be sacrificed during this time of sporadic, but potentially deadly terrorism...when fear is often a politician's tool of choice. Our Constitution is too important to be sacrificed for a Mussolini-like pragmatism which will comprimise nearly all vital constitutional elements, liberties and rights, just as long as the trains run on time...as if rights are tools for the government to extend to the peasents or do away with at its pleasure.
Republicans seem to believe in this Orwellian "Big-government of unlimited presidential power within the presidency's commander-in-chief role, which now stretched so far is in many ways in authoritarian, undemocratic, and unconstitutional...the GOP can no longer claim with a straight face that they favor "small-government" democracy.
All persons arrested or detained on U.S. soil , citizens and non-citizens, are protected by the Constitution, especially access to civilian courts, lawyers, and full due process...our founders were wise in creating a Constitution which gives those accused by gov't rights because it tends to keep the gov't honest, makes the gov't prove often politically motivated accusations, and protects our way of life and freedoms from from arbitrary presidential tyranny and military detention which is reminiscent of a dictatorship not a constitutional democracy.
The proposed totalitarian law was practiced by the UK prior to 1776 and was one of the many listed reasons for the Right to gain independence:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury;
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences;
... abolishing our most valuable Laws,...;
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy [Blackwater used during Katrina, etc.];
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands;
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
These are all from the Declaration of Independence, but the list isn't total as some are not as easily evident as those above. Now with the forensic detection of the very high-tech explosive nano-thermite--soley manufactured in the USA--in dust from the World Trade Center 9/11 attack constituting the Smoking Gun for certain US government involvement, http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=17624 It's clear that we must render the federal government impotent, raze it, and replace it with a new constitutional document and the new institutions it sets forth. At least it's clear if you give a damn and connect the dots.
Can one be mean and heartless with others without first being mean and heartless with themselves?
I have seen people who treat themselves "well" and others poorly. But "well" may suffer from bizarre distortions that cramp the ability to love anyone.
Joe
Guess who else is "considered a threat to national security?" A sixty-five year old fully disabled former nun, who wore a green shirt with a peace sign on it as she rode in a van, with a parade permit hanging in plain view. She slowly came out of the van to ask police why they were brutalizing other non-violent seniors, and throwing about forty-five peaceful peace demonstrators out of the Colorado Springs 2007 St. Patrick's Day Parade (Google same, and pull up notmytribe.org and csaction.org for photos of police tripping and dragging the disabled woman in the street, in full view of horrified onlooking kids and others, until she was bloody and raw). She died a year and a month later, still post traumatic stress disordered from the 'spook' directed torture she endured in Colorado Springs, the nation's super fusion center that directs fusion centers (over seventy) nationwide. And what do the spooks say: "constitutes a threat to national security?" Peace demonstrators, who they call "anarchists."
Guess we can look forward to peace 'anarchists' being held indefinitely, Guantanamo style, and think Pres. and Mrs. Obama had better stop allowing their darling little daughters to wear their peace shirts, 'cause free speech, just like the rule of law, appears to be a thing of the past.
Or, the other option, albeit a long shot, is for the president to quit listening to the high level spinners amongst his advisors, as he constantly attempts to go the reasonable/'let's negotiate' route. Ain't nothin' reasonable about the G&P (greed and power) addicts who have so succesfully accomplished their long time in the works coup de etat. Come on, Pres. Obama and true democracy supporters everywhere. Time to take off the blinders, leave La La Land behind, and get into fight mode to do whatever it takes to - UNDO THE COUP!
Of course they're "mulling." Why not?
- The imprisonment continues, without trial.
- The rendition continues.
- The torture continues.
- The cover-up of the Bushies continues
- The cover-up of Democratic complicity with Bushiness continues
- The cover-up of 0bama and Congrefs' extension of Bushy crimes advances apace.
Cheney and Bush said "The US doesn't torture" too. There's nothing new about this as a PR technique, nothing subtle, nothing requiring 0's vaunted rhetorical flair: it's called lying.
Is this the death of habeas corpus? We can all be deemed enemy combatants and be labeled a threat. Hell, they have already given the military the right to kill Americans abroad if they think you are a threat. He have lost our moral compass.
http://www.truth-it.net/is_this_the_death_of_habeas_corpus.html