DEMAND NDAA TYRANNY BE REPEALED
Obama Fights Federal Court Injunction Limiting NDAA
"HOMELAND BATTLEFIELD" Detentions
"HOMELAND BATTLEFIELD" Detentions
URGENT ALERT: The Obama administration has petitioned the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals to remove legal restrictions placed on "homeland battlefield" domestic detention provisions against U.S. citizens – provisions Obama promised he would NEVER use!
These protective restrictions were the work of a district judge, who had placed enforcement of the provisions under temporary injunction in mid-May. Obama signed the law last winter, but the court ruled that "indefinite detainment" as passed in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) was not constitutional.
Obama's petition states he is appealing the preliminary injunction and appealing a court order on its scope. The district judge specified that the injunction prohibiting the provision's enforcement is to be universally applied; the detention provision is NOT to be enforced in any case. The Obama legal team is furious. Further, the Obama administration objects that the judge denied its motion for reconsideration.
Team Obama has filed a memorandum with the district court where U.S. District Judge Katherine B. Forrest issued the injunction, seeking to refute her cause of action in which she cited possible injury to Americans, including the loss of their rights.
Judge Forrest's ruling for injunction came after Obama Justice Department officials failed to affirm that the journalists and others who brought the lawsuit would not be subject to indefinite federal detention for their work.
In a victory for the due process rights of the American people brought by leftwing activists, Federal Judge Kathleen Forrest granted a preliminary injunction and struck down these so-called "Homeland Battlefield" provisions of NDAA 2012 which we have TOLD you provide Barack Obama the power to indefinitely detain citizens in military confines without benefit of their 5th Amendment rights.
Section 1021, upon order of the president and at his sole discretion, INDISPUTABLY grants the United States military authority to exercise police powers on American soil and empowers agents of the military to detain "until the end of hostilities" anyone the president accuses of having "substantially supported" al Qaeda, the Taliban, or unspecified "associated forces."
Judge Forrest concluded that this Section "…failed to 'pass Constitutional muster' because its broad language could be used to quash political dissent." She added, "Section 1021 tries to do too much with too little – it lacks the minimal requirements of definition andscienter [legal knowledge of guilt] that could easily have been added, or could be added, to allow it to pass Constitutional muster."
In other words, Congress failed – perhaps deliberately – to define "substantial support" of terrorist groups or describe those activities which might be construed as crossing the legal line of mere dissent. And no law may be enforced if those to whom it applies are unable to clearly understand what a violation of that law entails.
Nothing could more plainly reveal Obama's rank corruption and tyrannical lust for power than his duplicity in crafting and then misrepresenting the final text, scope and authority of the NDAA – persistently supporting this tyranny yet repeatedly lying about it!
According to Democrat Senator Carl Levin, it was Obama himself who demanded American citizens be included under the detention law, and that the president have exclusive and discretionary authority to invoke the statute. "The language which precluded the application of Section [1021] to American citizens was in the bill that we originally approved…and the Administration asked us to remove the language which says that U.S. citizens and lawful residents would not be subject to this section," said Levin after the NDAA was signed into law.
Yet in his signing statement, Obama wrote that he had in fact forced Congress to"…[revise] provisions that otherwise would have jeopardized the safety, security and liberty of the American people."
"I want to clarify that my Administration will not authorize the indefinite military detention without trial of American citizens," wrote Obama. "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." This of course was an outright lie, given the expressed meaning of the statute as Obama himself had demanded it be written. The notoriously corrupt Department of Justice, which defended the NDAA before Judge Forrest, IS NOW APPEALING HER RULING SO THAT OBAMA CAN BREAK HIS WRITTEN WORD NOT TO UNCONSTITUTIONALLY DETAIN U.S. CITIZENS!
In valiant attempt to uphold Constitutional rights in the House, Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., a ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, and Republican Justin Amash of Michigan – a Tea Party freshman – heeded YOUR pleas!
They introduced an Amendment to NDAA that would strip it of these provisions empowering the military to indefinitely hold, without a trial, accused citizen suspects detained on U.S. soil contrary to the plain language of the Constitution.
The Smith-Amash Amendment had 59 co-sponsors.
The Smith-Amash Amendment would also have altered the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), enacted days after Sept. 11, 2001, which grants the president the authority to use all "necessary and appropriate force" against individuals determined to have participated in that day's terrorist attacks. Persons suspected of harboring those individuals or terrorist groups can also be detained under the AUMF.
"It is very, very rare to give that amount of power to the president [and] take away any person's fundamental freedom and lock them up without the normal due process of law," Smith told The Hill.
We need to DEMAND that the Smith-Amash Amendment to NDAA be re-introduced again in both chambers, and END the indefinite detention of Americans. In addition to UNCONSTITUTIONALLY codifying the authority of the military to indefinitely detain so-called terrorism suspects without charge or trial, the NDAA Section 1022, requires that a category of foreign terrorism suspects be initially held in military custody, absent a presidential waiver.
Though Obama issued a Presidential Policy Directive saying he would limit the instances in which mandatory military custody applies, neither Obama nor future presidents are bound by this directive. The Smith-Amash Amendment would repeal the NDAA mandatory military custody provision altogether. It MUST be applied to both FY 2012 and 2013 NDAA legislation for these Acts to be remotely Constitutional!
We do NOT just trust the president won't assassinate us; we do NOT surrender our rights of habeas corpus against indefinite detention and military tribunals; we do NOT grant vague, expanded, extraordinary "cyberspace" war-making powers to the Department of Defense to conduct "clandestine online operations" – that could be waged against U.S. citizens LIKE US!
NO MORE NDAA without CONSTITUTIONAL LIMITS, CONTROLS, AND EXPLICIT OVERSIGHT outside the Executive Branch. Congress still refuses to protect YOUR rights! Along with clinging to all their previous Constitutional violations, new "cyberspace" language in the FY 2013 H.R. 4310 NDAA actually EXPANDS war making powers to the DoD /NSA, while REMOVING the present restriction that the DoD must take only actions that are "subject to the policy principles and legal regimes that the Department follows for kinetic capabilities, including the law of armed conflicts."
Instead, Congress seems determined to grant Obama unfettered war making latitude. The DoD will be empowered to use these new expanded powers without restriction, against anyone declared an enemy under the very broad AUMF (the Authorization for Use of Military Force joint resolution passed by the Congress on September 14, 2001, authorizing the use of United States Armed Forces against those responsible for the attacks on September 11, 2001).
Obama's Secretary of Homeland Security Big Sis Napolitano has already made it explicitly clear that Constitutionalists, veterans, border security activists, home schoolers, Second Amendment advocates and the like are potential terrorists, otherwise known as "belligerents"… The cyberspace change in NDAA smacks of further enabling the military to operate against our own civilian population, which is why not only the right of habeas corpus but the Posse Comitatus Act MUST BE immediately reinstated!
CONTRARY TO OBAMA'S LYING LAWYERS AND CONGRESSIONAL TALKING POINTS – the FY 2013 NDAA bill does NOTHING to prevent the indefinite detention of Americans, JUST AS NDAA DOES NOT UNDER THE 2012 VERSION. The new year's bill only reiterates that habeas corpus is a right in our courts system as established under Article III of the Constitution.
That such a right exists in the courts of the United States has never been under debate. But millions of Constitution-minded Americans vigilant for liberty recognize that Americans detained as "belligerents" under the terms of the NDAA will not be detained and tried in Article III courts, but will be unconstitutionally subjected to military tribunals. There is nothing in the 2013 NDAA H.R. 4310 that passed out of the House and is sitting referred to the Senate to guarantee Americans will be tried in a Constitutional court and not a military commission.
Most of what is contained in the over-500-page 2012 version of the NDAA is inimical to liberty. For example, under the provisions of Section 1021, the president has the absolute power to arrest and detain citizens of the United States without their being informed of any criminal charges, without a trial on the merits of those charges, and without a scintilla of the due process safeguards protected by the Constitution of the United States.
In order to execute this immense power, the NDAA unlawfully grants the president the absolute and unquestionable authority to deploy the armed forces of the United States to apprehend and to indefinitely detain those suspected of threatening the security of the "homeland." In the language of this legislation, these people are called "covered persons."
Regardless of denials, protestations, and promises to the contrary, the language of the NDAA places every citizen of the United States within the universe of potential "covered persons." Any American could be branded a "belligerent" and thus subject to the complete confiscation of his or her constitutional civil liberties and nearly never-ending incarceration in a military prison.
On Friday May 18, 2012 the U.S. House of Representatives passed the 2013 National Defense Authorization Act – NDAA – and sent it to the Senate, where YOU need to help ensure the measure faces a much higher bar of fealty to the Constitution than has been met so far!
Make no mistake: on the 220th anniversary of the Bill of Rights, Congress overwhelmingly voted to effectively extinguish those rights. They relinquished their claim to lawful authority by violating Article 1, Section 9 of the Constitution and granting license to the Executive Branch to become the very tyrannical dictatorship our Founding Fathers fought and died to escape. Congress' betrayal has now set America firmly upon the path of pathetic banana republics and fearsome totalitarian states, with the knock on the door in the dead of night, the disappearances – where political dissidents can be suppressed, silenced or left to rot in unknown prisons. As I wrote you when Congress passed NDAA, I grieved for my country. Today, we must fight back!
While the Obama Administration disgraces itself in court, fighting to inflict more harm on the essential liberty of American citizens, We the People MUST DEMAND OUR REPRESENTATIVES ACT TO RIGHT THIS WRONG!
This gaping wound to our liberty MUST not stand. My earlier, straightforward analyses of Sections 1031 and 1032 of the NDAA (National Defense Authorization Act) make it clear why.
- Congressmen Claimed The Bill Specifically Limited Actions Of The US Government To Al-Qaeda And Taliban Terrorists Involved In 9/11 Aggression
False. This refers to: Sec. 1031(b) Covered Persons: (1) A person who planned, authorized, committed , or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored those responsible for those attacks. (2) A person who was part of or substantially supported al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition forces…
Which continues:
…including any person who has committed a belligerent act or has directly supported such hostilities in aid of such enemy forces. - Congressmen Claimed Section 1032 Does Not Cover US Citizens.
False. Section 1032(2) states that the requirement to detain an individual applies to someone who has been determined to be "a member of, al-Qaeda or an associated force that acts in coordination with or pursuant to the direction of al-Qaeda: and to have participated in the course of planning or carrying out an attack or attempted attack against the United States or its coalition partners."
Which continues, section (4) "The Secretary of Defense (Leon Panetta) may, in consultation with the Secretary of State (Hillary Clinton) and the Director of National Intelligence (James R. Clapper), waive the requirements of paragraph (1) if the Secretary submits to Congress a certification in writing that such a waiver is in the national security interests of the United States." 
Congressmen Claimed Section 1032(b)(1) Specifically Excludes US Citizens
False. Section 1032(b)(1) states, "The requirement to detain a person in military custody under this section does not extend to citizens of the United States." What this section says is the REQUIREMENT to detain doesn't extend to U.S. Citizens, but the OPTION does. That means they don't have to detain them, but can if they want to!
Congressional and Obama Administration supporters of this bill do not WANT to protect the rights and civil liberty of U.S. Citizens.
Listen to these words of Justice Blackstone, as quoted by Alexander Hamilton in Federalist Paper 84.
"'To bereave a man of life, [says he] or by violence to confiscate his estate, without accusation or trial, would be so gross and notorious an act of despotism, as must at once convey the alarm of tyranny throughout the whole nation; but confinement of the person,by secretly hurrying him to jail, where his sufferings are unknown or forgotten, is a less public, a less striking, and therefore a more dangerous engine of arbitrary government. 'And as a remedy for this fatal evil he is everywhere peculiarly emphatical in his encomiums on the habeas corpus act, which in one place he calls 'the BULWARK of the British Constitution.'"
This is EXACTLY what these provision in the NDAA do. We do not have to keep these provisions to fund the military. They are completely irrelevant to that need.
The truth is out there. You have a responsibility to it. Our elected Congressmen and Senators have a responsibility to it. Don't let them get away with promulgating a distortion and destruction of that truth. DEMAND THEY FIX THIS TERRIBLE LEGISLATION, AND RESTORE OUR CIVIL LIBERTIES!
We must know that we cannot have peace from terrorism without having liberty in America! Don't sell our liberty for a little temporary security. It is not our liberty to sell. Our Founding Fathers pledged their lives, their fortunes, their sacred honor for ages and millions not yet born. This liberty belongs to our children, our grandchildren, and their children.
WE MUST STAND FOR LIBERTY TODAY OR OUR CHILDREN WILL BOW TO TYRANTS TOMORROW!
Keep Faith,
Lynne Roberts, President
Americans United for Freedom
Americans United for Freedom
KrisAnne Hall is a former prosecutor and Constitutional attorney who was fired from her job for teaching the Constitution to citizen groups. She is a disabled veteran of the US Army, a Russian linguist, a mother, a pastor's wife and a patriot. Her former employer, State Attorney for Florida's 3rd Judicial Circuit, gave her a choice – give up her First Amendment right to speak on her own time or be fired. KrisAnne said, "My First Amendment rights are worth more than a paycheck and I will not surrender them." She now travels the country and teaches the Constitution and the history that gave us our founding documents. We are proud to have KrisAnne as a contributor to Americans United for Freedom.
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