Remember when liberals opposed indefinite military detention of terror suspects captured on American soil?
Either do the libs or the President:
President Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) today, allowing indefinite detention to be codified into law. As you know, the White House had threatened to veto an earlier version of the NDAA but reversed course shortly before Congress voted on the final bill. While President Obama issued a signing statement saying he had “serious reservations” about the provisions, the statement only applies to how his administration would use it and would not affect how the law is interpreted by subsequent administrations.
But wait – isn’t this exactly what liberals were comdemning George W. Bush for?
The statute is particularly dangerous because it has no temporal or geographic limitations, and can be used by this and future presidents to militarily detain people captured far from any battlefield.
Under the Bush administration, similar claims of worldwide detention authority were used to hold even a U.S. citizen detained on U.S. soil in military custody, and many in Congress now assert that the NDAA should be used in the same way again.
Forget about Jimmy Carter; it seems that Barack Obama has borrowed the most noxious and troublesome aspects of almost every previous Administration:
- From George W. Bush, the most troubling ingressions into civil liberty in the same of national security.
- From Bill Clinton, the most obnosxious two-faced hypocrisy and star-snuggling.
- From George HW Bush, the most obnoxious aspects of ofay patricianism.
- From Carter? Obama may well turn out to be a less competent president. But there’s a competition, there.
- From Ford? Obama is to choosing Vice Presidents as Gerald Ford was to controlling his golf swing.
- From Nixon? The same blithe assurance that massive intervention was just plain the right thing to do.
- From LBJ, Obama gets the ideal that for every issue, there is an exquisitely expensive government program or regulation, and a propensity to think “dirty tricks” are a normal political tactic.
- And from JFK, Obama takes the lesson that public relations is as good as competence.
Bring on November.
Yes, it is strange how after January 2008, “illegal warrantless domestic spying” suddenly became okay to do. And torture. And gitmo. And deficit spending. Well, the last one….yes, President Bush’s $200-300B deficits were different from Obama’s $1.4T ones, so that could explain that.
Seems the boys and girls find out what is really going on once they get there. Nothing new about that. You cherry-picked and glossed over Nixon and Ford, who knew more about the World than either Bush, in spite of HW Bush having spent all that time on the inside. As for me, I don’t much shed crocodile tears about an American “citizen” preaching kill Americans and killling Americans and innocent others who gets whacked by a drone while hiding in Yemen.
Just one teensy-weensy point. Obama made a lot of noise about not “allowing” the law to be applied as “written” and that he would NEVER, never, allow the indefinite detention of US citizens without trial. That, despite the fact that before the law passed, he threatened to veto it unless it was CHANGED to allow exactly that. So, Congress passed it without change, and it explicitly prohibited application to US citizens. The clear language of the bill says so. Obama is lying.
It’s only a series of very short steps from “Democrat” to “Democratic Socialist” to “National Socialist” and then Obama’s “Justice Department” can start issuing Brown Shirts to enforcement officers.
You’ll see this played as a Conservative move on Obama’s part, playing to the electorate; but there’s nothing Conservative about it. The Star Chamber was in full use in England about the time the pilgrims took off for America – the Founders would have had vivid memories of the mechanism used to abuse political enemies and disfavored minorities.
The Constitution and its amendments were specifically intended to LIMIT the power of government to do arbitrary and un-reviewable actions such as indefinite detention without charges, right to counsel, or habeas corpus. The Constitution authorizes it during a time of actual rebellion but the last instance of that in this country was the War Between the States. The current action is flat unconstitutional, same as Obamacare.
Give President Obama credit – he’s a transformative man. He’s done more in three years to turn the United States from a prosperous country into a Third World shithole than any other “leader” since Robert Mugabe. I just wish I knew where it was safe for us modern-day pilgrims to flee to when the tire burning starts.
Perhaps I was not sufficiently clear. Obama WANTED the right of indefinite detention of US citizens, and the House refused. The clear language of the legislation absolutely prohibits it. No constitutional rights have been effected, despite Obama’s inclinations, machinations and imaginations.
Hmmm, no comment from the COWARDS over at PenisBlog?