Published on Monday, December 24, 2012 by TruthDig.com
Over the past year I and other
plaintiffs including Noam Chomsky and Daniel Ellsberg have pressed a
lawsuit in the federal courts to nullify Section 1021(b)(2) of the
National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). This egregious section, which
permits the government to use the military to detain U.S. citizens,
strip them of due process and hold them indefinitely in military
detention centers, could have been easily fixed by Congress. The Senate
and House had the opportunity this month to include in the 2013 version
of the NDAA an unequivocal statement that all U.S. citizens would be
exempt from 1021(b)(2), leaving the section to apply only to foreigners.
But restoring due process for citizens was something the Republicans
and the Democrats, along with the White House, refused to do. The fate
of some of our most basic and important rights—ones enshrined in the
Bill of Rights as well as the Fourth and Fifth amendments of the
Constitution—will be decided in the next few months in the courts. If
the courts fail us, a gulag state will be cemented into place. http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/12/24
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