Barack Obama has signed the National Defense Authorization Act into law. Having negotiated stronger detention authority in the Senate, he issued an irrelevant signing statement saying that he had reservations about that authority. Nevertheless, he or the next president will now claim the authority to imprison -- or even kill -- American citizens without due process of law.
Here's what Anthony Romero, Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union, had to say about it:
President Obama's action today is a blight on his legacy because he will forever be known as the president who signed indefinite detention without charge or trial into law.
We are incredibly disappointed that President Obama signed this new law even though his administration had already claimed overly broad detention authority in court... Any hope that the Obama administration would roll back the constitutional excesses of George Bush in the war on terror was extinguished today.
I will never vote for someone who signed a law stripping me of my most fundamental rights. I will not vote for Barack Obama.