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New NDAA Expands Empire But Forbids Debate on War

Tuesday, May 19, 2015 4:35

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(Before It's News)

By: Voice of Reason

FOR MORE NEWS BY VOICE OF REASON CLICK HERE!

www.thelastgreatstand.com

This post should be taken in the context that is discussed in my previous post titled: INTERNET SERVICE PROVIDERS MAKE TERRIFYING ANNOUNCEMENT ABOUT OBAMA’S TAKEOVER. This is meant to be a series of post showing how one thing will lead to another.

TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THE N.D.A.A: CHECK OUT WHAT THEY DON’T WANT YOU TO KNOW!

This is a classic example of what is REALLY going on. No one gives a rats @ss about things that may or may not come down the pike at a later date. Right now mankind, and particularly America, is facing possible extinction or the loss of almost all of humanity from any one of a number of areas: The worldwide Economic Depression that is around the corner threatening to wipe out 90% of the earths population in year one (just what humans will do to one another without food and resources), either a possible EMP Attack, or maybe even a full on Nuclear Exchange between members of the nuclear family, and these has even been some discussion of celestial bodies that could result in complete extinction level events if they were to hit earth for ANYONE NOT ALREADY IN A SECURE UNDERGROUND GOVERNMENT BUNKER!

SO WHAT DOES IT MEAN WHEN IT SAYS THE NDAA “FORBIDS” DEBATE ON WAR?

MY GUESS IS THIS IS SOME LOOSE ATTEMPT TO REGULATE (SILENCE) FREE SPEECH!

EVENTUALLY ARTICLES LIKE THE FOLLOWING WILL NOT BE TOLERATED:

Congressman Reveals WHY The Feds May Unleash Jade Helm

Over 50% of Americans Afraid “Jade Helm” Will Take Over In Their State

Jade Helm & The Bill Ayers Connection

Jade Helm Spreading to Other States? Other “Accidental Deaths?”

New Jade Helm Report: Shipment of Military Equipment (Video):

Pentagon Bluntly Responds to Senator Cruz’s Jade Helm Inquiry

Abbott Calls Obama a Liar & Has Texas National Guard Watch Jade Helm

Louie Gohmert Expresses Fear on His Website About Jade Helm

Jade Helm Drills in Exact Locations of Leaked Russian Targets

Special Forces Officer Explains Jade Helm 15 (Video Included)

DEAD BODIES IN TUNNELS? – “OPERATION JADE HELM”

MARTIAL LAW, JADE HELM, WALMARTS, TUNNELS, & FEMA CAMPS

Military Caught LYING About Martial Law “Operation Jade Helm”

“Are U.S. Citizens Aware of AND Prepared for “Jade Helm 15”?

“OPERATION JADE HELM:” AKA Martial Law is ALL TOO REAL!

Special Ops Veterans Officially Countered Government’s Jade Helm

Military is Transitioning From Drills (Jade Helm) to MARTIAL LAW…

My prediction is that Obama & Crime Inc. will attempt to convince the public that there is no place for articles “of that kind” in the public discourse because they represent a type of speech that is NOT protected under the First Amendment: Incitement to Violence. Anyone worth their salt in Constitution Law will be able to tell you the there is no “Incitement to Violence” unless words used are DIRECTED to INCITING or producing IMMINENT lawless action, and It is LIKELY to incite or PRODUCE such action (CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER). Obviously, that is not the case, but as I mentioned in THE MOB MENTALITY OF THE LEFT IS TAKING OVER THE FIRST AMENDMENT, Obama knows a powerful mob on his side trumps all law: LOOK AT FERGUSON AND BALTIMORE!

WND writes: Some of the nation’s most respected legal teams are asking the Supreme Court to take up a challenge to the indefinite-detention provisions of the National Defense Authorization Act, charging the law has created the framework for a police state.

The controversial provision authorizes the military, UNDER PRESIDENTIAL AUTHORITY THE POWER TO ARREST, CAPTURE, and DETAIN WITHOUT TRIAL and hold indefinitely American citizens thought to “represent an enduring security threat to the United States.”

Journalist Chris Hedges is among the plaintiffs charging the law could be used to target journalists who report on terror-related issues.

A friend-of-the-court brief submitted in the case states: “The central question now before this court is whether the federal judiciary will stand idly by while Congress and the president establish the legal framework for the establishment of a police state and the subjugation of the American citizenry through the threat of indefinite military arrest and detention, without the right to counsel, the right to confront one’s accusers, or the right to trial.”

The brief was submitted to the Supreme Court by attorneys with the U.S. Justice Foundation of Ramona, Calif., Friedman Harfenist Kraut & Perlstein of Lake Success, N.Y., and William J. Olson, P.C. of Vienna, Va.

The attorneys are Michael Connelly, Steven J. Harfenist, William J. Olson, Herbert W. Titus, John S. Miles, Jeremiah L. Morgan and Robert J. Olson.

They are adding their voices to the chorus asking the Supreme Court to overturn the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which said the plaintiffs didn’t have standing to challenge the law adopted by Congress.

The brief is on behalf of U.S. Rep. Steve Stockman, Virginia Delegate Bob Marshall, Virginia Sen. Dick Black, the U.S. Justice Foundation, Gun Owners Foundation, Gun Owners of America, Center for Media & Democracy, Downsize DC Foundation, Downsize DC.org, Free Speech Defense & Education Fund, Free Speech Coalition, Western Journalism Center, The Lincoln Institute, Institute on the Constitution, Abraham Lincoln Foundation and Conservative Legal Defense & Education Fund.

The 2014 NDAA was fast-tracked through the U.S. Senate, with no time for discussion or amendments, while most Americans were distracted by the scandal surrounding A&E’s troubles with “Duck Dynasty” star Phil Robertson.

Eighty-five of 100 senators voted in favor of the new version of the NDAA, which had already been quietly passed by the House of Representatives.

FIND OUT WHO, CALL THEM 10-40x per day, and give the hell!

Hedges, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, and others filed a lawsuit in 2012 against the Obama administration to challenge the legality of an earlier version of the NDAA.

It’s Section 1021 of the 2012 NDAA, and its successors, that drew a lawsuit by Hedges, Daniel Ellsberg, Jennifer Bolen, Noam Chomsky, Alex O’Brien, Kai Warg All, Brigitta Jonsottir and the group U.S. Day of Rage. Many of the plaintiffs are authors or reporters who stated that the threat of indefinite detention by the U.S. military already had altered their activities.

“It’s clearly unconstitutional,” Hedges says of the bill. “It is a huge and egregious assault against our democracy. It overturns over 200 years of law, which has kept the military out of domestic policing.”

Hedges is a former foreign correspondent for the New York Times and was part of a team of reporters awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 2002 for the paper’s coverage of global terrorism.

The friend-of-the-court brief warns the precedent “leaves American citizens vulnerable to arrest and detention, without the protection of the Bill of Rights, under either the plaintiff’s or the government’s theory of the case.

“The judiciary must not await subsequent litigation to resolve this issue, as the nature of military detention is that American citizens then would have no adequate legal remedy,” the brief explains.

Video mania: The instruction manual on how to restore America to what it once was: “Taking America Back” on DVD. This package also includes the “Tea Party at Sea” DVD.

Section 1021 allows the detention of anyone, including American citizens, by the military, if the president considers that person to have helped with terror. It’s different from the Authorization for the Use of Military Force, which was adopted immediately after the Sept. 11 terror attacks, because while that law allows detention, there must be something linking them to the Sept. 11 attacks.

“Section 1021 authorizes detention, potentially forever, and even rendition of American citizens to foreign nations,” the brief points out. “If this court refuses to hear the Hedges challenge, it will leave American citizens subject to unconstitutional military arrest and detention.

“If this court does not grant the petition, there is no reason to believe the U.S. presidents would cease to assert ‘the right to place certain individuals [including American citizens] in military detention, without trial.’ There would continue to be no statutory constraint on an arrest being authorized by a military officer of unspecified rank. There would be no protection provided by the requirement of a grand jury indictment. There would be no requirement of an arrest arrant issued by an Article II judge supported by a sworn affidavit showing probable cause of the commission of a specific crime. Neither would there be any protection against use of compelled testimony, or against an violation of due process of law. There would be no civilian proceedings whatsoever against the person detained. Indeed, there is no requirement that the individual being detained has committed any federal crime, and military detentions could be used to circumvent the protections afforded American citizens by the treason clause of the U.S. Constitution.”

It describes a scary scenario.

“After the string of black Suburbans pulls away, it is difficult to believe that the military would provide relatives or lawyers with any information whatsoever as to where the person being detained was being held.”

After all, it explains, Congress specifically expressed its desire for the detention provision to apply to American citizens even on American soil by rejecting multiple amendments that would have exempted them.

And Obama, also, affirmed the detention authority, stating, “I want to clarify that my administration will not authorize the indefinite military detention without trial of American citizens … My administration will interpret Section 1021 in a manner that ensures that any detention it authorizes complies with the Constitution, the laws of war, and all other applicable law.”

Simply stating that means it could be interpreted in a contrary manner.

At the trial court level, U.S. District Judge Katherine B. Forrest issued a Memorandum Opinion and Order that struck the provision as unconstitutional.

Multiple states have passed laws banning its enforcement inside those states. Herb Titus, a constitutional expert, previously told WND Forrest’s ruling underscored “the arrogance of the current regime, in that they will not answer questions that they ought to answer to a judge because they don’t think they have to.”

The judge explained that the plaintiffs alleged paragraph 1021 is “constitutionally infirm, violating both their free speech and associational rights guaranteed by the 1st Amendment as well due process rights guaranteed by the 5th Amendment.”

She noted the government “did not call any witnesses, submit any documentary evidence or file any declarations.”

“It must be said that it would have been a rather simple matter for the government to have stated that as to these plaintiffs and the conduct as to which they would testify, that [paragraph] 1021 did not and would not apply, if indeed it did or would not,” she wrote.

Instead, the administration only responded with, “I’m not authorized to make specific representations regarding specific people.”

“The court’s attempt to avoid having to deal with the constitutional aspects of the challenge was by providing the government with prompt notice in the form of declarations and depositions of the … conduct in which plaintiffs are involved and which they claim places them in fear of military detention,” she wrote. “To put it bluntly, to eliminate these plaintiffs’ standing simply by representing that their conduct does not fall within the scope of 1021 would have been simple. The government chose not to do so – thereby ensuring standing and requiring this court to reach the merits of the instant motion.

“Plaintiffs have stated a more than plausible claim that the statute inappropriately encroaches on their rights under the 1st Amendment,” she wrote.

Experts have expressed concern that even a journalist who has interviewed a member of a terror group may be considered to have rendered aid to that group.

The government appealed the trial judge’s ruling to the 2nd Circuit, which abruptly ruled that the plaintiffs had no right to challenge the law.

In the following interview, Hedges, early in the case, described what he sees developing:

Activist Post writes: On Friday the House passed a massive National Defense Authorization for 2016 that will guarantee US involvement in more wars and overseas interventions for years to come. The Republican majority resorted to trickery to evade the meager spending limitations imposed by the 2011 budget control act – limitations that did not, as often reported, cut military spending but only slowed its growth.

But not even slower growth is enough when you have an empire to maintain worldwide, so the House majority slipped into the military spending bill an extra $89 billion for an emergency war fund. Such “emergency” spending is not addressed in the growth caps placed on the military under the 2011 budget control act. It is a loophole filled by Congress with Fed-printed money.

Ironically, a good deal of this “emergency” money will go to President Obama’s war on ISIS even though neither the House nor the Senate has debated – let alone authorized – that war! Although House leadership allowed 135 amendments to the defense bill – with many on minor issues like regulations on fire hoses – an effort by a small group of Representatives to introduce an amendment to debate the current US war in Iraq and Syria was rejected.

While squashing debate on ongoing but unauthorized wars, the bill also pushed the administration toward new conflicts. Despite the president’s unwise decision to send hundreds of US military trainers to Ukraine, a move that threatens the current shaky ceasefire, Congress wants even more US involvement in Ukraine’s internal affairs. The military spending bill included $300 million to directly arm the Ukrainian government even as Ukrainian leaders threaten to again attack the breakaway regions in the east. Does Congress really think US-supplied weapons killing ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine is nygood idea?

The defense authorization bill also seeks to send yet more weapons into Iraq. This time the House wants to send weapons directly to the Kurds in northern Iraq without the approval of the Iraqi government. Although these weapons are supposed to be used to fight ISIS, we know from too many prior examples that they often find their way into the hands of the very people we are fighting. Also, arming an ethnic group seeking to break away from Baghdad and form a new state is an unwise infringement of the sovereignty of Iraq. It is one thing to endorse the idea of secession as a way to reduce the possibility of violence, but it is quite something else to arm one side and implicitly back its demands.

While the neocons keep pushing the lie that the military budget is shrinking under the Obama Administration, the opposite is true. As the CATO Institute pointed out recently, President George W. Bush’s average defense budget was $601 billion, while during the Obama administration the average has been $687 billion. This bill is just another example of this unhealthy trend.

Next year’s military spending plan keeps the US on track toward destruction of its economy at home while provoking new resentment over US interventionism overseas. It is a recipe for disaster. Let’s hope for either a presidential veto, or that on final passage Congress rejects this bad bill.

By: Voice of Reason

FOR MORE NEWS BY VOICE OF REASON CLICK HERE!

www.thelastgreatstand.com

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