Obama insists on indefinite detention of Americans

 from RT.com and Oathkeepers.org

Think that President Obama will stand by his word and veto the legislation that will allow the government to detain American citizens without charge or trial? Think again.

The Obama administration has insisted that the president will veto the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012, a bill that passed through the Senate last week. Under the legislation, the United States of America is deemed a battlefield and Americans suspected of committing a terrorism offense can be held without trial and tortured indefinitely. Despite the grave consequences for citizens and the direct assault on the US Constitution, the act managed to make it through both halves of Congress but President Obama says he won’t let it become a law.

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According to Senator Carl Levin, however, Americans should be a bit more concerned about what the president’s actual intentions are. Levin, who sits on the Armed Services Committee as chairman, has revealed to Congress that the Obama administration influenced the wording of the act and shot down text that would have saved American citizens from the indefinite imprisonment and suspension of habeas corpus.

Senator Levin told Congress recently that under the original wording of the National Defense Authorization Act, American citizens were excluded from the provision that allowed for detention. Once Obama’s officials saw the text though, says Levin, “the administration asked us to remove the language which says that US citizens and lawful residents would not be subject to this section.”

Specifically, the section that Obama asked to be reworded was Section 1031 of the NDAA FY2012, which says that "any person who has committed a belligerent act" could be held indefinitely.

“It was the administration that asked us to remove the very language which we had in the bill which passed the committee…we removed it at the request of the administration,” said Levin. “It was the administration which asked us to remove the very language the absence of which is now objected to.”

Presidential candidate Ron Paul recently said, “This is big,” adding “This step where they can literally arrest American citizens and put them away without trial… is arrogant and bold and dangerous.”

Senator Lindsey Graham, a backer of the legislation, says current laws protecting Americans are too lax. Rather, says the senator, anyone suspected of terrorism "should not be read their Miranda Rights. They should not be given a lawyer."

Republican Sen. Kelly Ayotte said last week that "terrorists shouldn't be able to view all of our interrogation practices online,” and Senator Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) added during debate this week, "When a member of Al Qaeda or a similar associated terrorist group, I want . . . them to be terrified about what's going to happen to them in American custody.”

"We need the authority to hold those individuals in military custody so we aren't reading them Miranda rights," adds Kelly.

from here and here

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http://oathkeepers.org/oath/2011/12/01/stewart-rhodes-interview-citizen...

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Stewart graduated from Yale Law School in 2004, where his paper “Solving the Puzzle of Enemy Combatant Status” won Yale’s Judge William E. Miller Prize for best paper on the Bill of Rights. He assisted teaching U.S. military history at Yale’s History Department, was a Yale Research Scholar, and is now writing a book on the dangers of applying the laws of war to the American people (with partial support from a modest but gracious grant from Yale Law School). After law school he clerked for the Arizona Supreme Court and then served as a small town Montana criminal defense (including contract public defender) and general practice lawyer. He has served in a pro bono capacity on several gun rights cases before federal Courts of Appeal and the United States Supreme Court. While practicing law in Montana, he also served as a volunteer fire-fighter (practicing what he preaches).

Stewart was invited to speak at Stanford University on unlawful enemy combatant status, and teaches classes on the Constitution and Bill of Rights. Stewart currently writes articles on the Bill of Rights for S.W.A.T. Magazine, and has written for The Warrior, the journal of Gerry Spence’s Trial Lawyer’s College; for www.moreliberty.org; and for Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership (JPFO), and for his own Dirt Rhodes Scholar blog where he was an outspoken critic of Bush Administration violations of the Constitution.

After founding Oath Keepers, Stewart has appeared on dozens of nationally syndicated radio shows, on scores of local radio shows across the country, and has appeared on MSNBC’s Hardball with Chris Matthews, on Fox News’ The Factor with Bill O’Reilly, and on CNN Special Reports.[1]

But Constitutional scholar and founder of Oathkeepers, Stewart Rhodes, disagrees. From the Oathkeepers website:

The Senate is very near to passing Senate Bill 1867, the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012, which contains provisions that will give clear congressional support and authorization for indefinite military detention and military trial of American citizens. If passed, this will amount to a declaration of war against the American people, authorizing the Obama Administration and all future administrations to treat Americans the same as citizens of occupied Iraq or Afghanistan, subjecting us all to military jurisdiction and the jurisdiction of the international laws of war, rather than our Bill of Rights and our domestic criminal laws, upon the mere say so of Obama or one of his minions.

Listen to his comments.

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