In the seventh grade, I had a Social Studies teacher who I liked a lot. I still remember some of the things he said in class. I remember when he shocked us all by saying “I'm willing to bet that in your lifetimes, you will see gasoline selling for over fifty cents a gallon!” (yes, I'm dating myself). I remember being surprised when he told us that many totalitarian states were not so different from the United States when it came to human rights; that many of those totalitarian states have indeed a constitution, or similar document that guarantees civil liberties to their citizens. He went on to say that the difference was that in many countries, unlike here in the USA, they simply did not follow the laws as set forth in their constitution and therefore ignored those citizen rights. This was a revelation to my thirteen year old sense of the world: how could any country simply ignore their own laws? Obviously, a lot has changed since I was in seventh grade. Today, Pot and Kettle meet to share notes on blackness.
Last week, the US Senate passed the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012. The act authorizes the US military to take action within the borders of the United States, to indefinitely detain US citizens, and to deny US citizens their Article III rights to a jury trial. All these measures are in direct conflict with the rights of US citizens as set forth in the US constitution. The bill must now be reconciled with a similar bill passed earlier in the House, and must then be signed by Pres. Obama before becoming the law of the land.
The National Defense Authorization Act is passed every year to authorize expenditures to pay for the US military during the coming fiscal year. And every year, the bill includes a few zingers hidden in it: to pay for pork-barrel projects, or secret tax breaks for special campaign contributors, and the like.. This year is no different, but it also includes a few changes to our national laws that appear to be outright unconstitutional. Specifically, the bill includes a provisions that requires military detention of suspected al-quada members or members of affiliates groups involved in plots or attacks on the US. US citizens would be exempt from this provision. The bill authorizes the US military to detain civilians, including US citizens, anywhere in the world, even within the United States. The bill also would provide for indefinite detention of suspected terrorists, even US citizens detained within US borders, without legal counsel, judicial review, or trial by jury. (sources here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/... and here: http://www.aclu.org/... and here: http://www.aclu.org/...)
And according to one report, the NDAA2012 also legalizes sex with animals (here: http://www.texasgopvote.com/...). Perhaps the authors of this article chose the whole legalizing-sex-with-animals thing in an effort to distract readers from the real humping canard of this bill: the US military taking action against US citizens.
President Obama has threatened to veto the bill unless the provision that requires military detention of suspected terrorists is removed. The president has said that he wants to retain the flexibility to use either the military or the US legal system in dealing with terrorists, and views with disfavor the limits placed on his executive powers by the legislative branch. But the president has so far voiced no complaints about using the US military against US citizens or the loss of constitutionally-protected rights by US citizens.
But others have, both on the political left and the right. That is because the US constitution guarantees certain inalienable rights to US citizens. Article III of the US constitution states that a trail of all crimes, excepting impeachment, shall be a jury trial and will be held in the state in which the crime occurred. Article I of the US constitution says that the writ of habeus corpus shall not be overturned: habeus corpus is the historically important legal instrument that safeguards individual freedom against arbitrary state detention, and states that all prisoners have a right to a hearing before a judge to determine the legality of the detention. And the Sixth amendment to the US constitution guarantees a public jury trial to all accused, and that those accused shall know the charges against them, and are guaranteed the right to confront the witnesses against them and the right to legal counsel. Meanwhile, a variety of laws mandate that all prison sentences must include an end date; indefinite detention is illegal.
The NDAA of 2012 sets these clear constitutional limitations on arrest and detention upside-down. Now the government, rather than the constitution decides who gets access to legal counsel and who gets to defend themselves in a trail decided by a jury of their peers, and who gets detention without legal representation and a secret trial based on secret evidence. And according to the new law, the US military can be used to make those arrests of US citizens inside US borders. The alarmist in me wonders whether I could be on the receiving end of a JDAM bomb if I am unwilling to come out of my house with my hands up. Or perhaps an M-1 Abrahms tank could be used to remove those those unsanitary tents from the local park. Or possibly, your Sunday church service could be subject to a drone fly-by and surveillance
Of course, supporters of the law say it will rarely be used, and then only in the cases of the enemies of America (do you mean like The Enemies of America – T.E.A. - Party?). At one time, the US constitution set a strict definition of treason to include making war on the United States, adhering to the enemies, or giving them aid or comfort. However, the Patriot Act has vastly expanded what is now considered enemy activity to include “material support for terrorism”. This could mean hosting visitors in your home, a charitable donation, and perhaps even simple advocacy speech, depending on the zealotry of your prosecutor. To fight such a charge, you will need your lawyer to argue that you were acting within your constitutional rights, provided the government allows you a lawyer. Who actually gets arrested on a charge of providing aid to terrorists seems to depend largely on the prosecutors: a terrorist plotter, a peaceful practitioner of Islam or another minority religion, someone with an opposing political view, or perhaps a group of people engaged in petitioning their government for a redress of grievances.
The Patriot Act removed many of the constitution protections against search and seizure of citizens; it gave the government permission to tap your phones and read your mail without a warrant or judicial review. The NDAA2012 hacks broadly at civil protections enumerated in Article III of the US Constitution and amendments V, VI, VIII, and IX (limitations on trials and punishment, the right to confront witnesses, and prohibitions against cruel and unusual punishments).
Today, I have a better understanding than I did in the seventh-grade how a country can blithely ignore its own constitution and laws, trading freedoms for security. I think my seventh grade Social Studies teacher was trying to tell us something about societies and their laws. I would like to think he was trying to tell us that written laws are only as good as the people who make it their business to uphold those laws. Here in the United States, we the people are blessed with some mechanisms by which we can make and change laws, on paper anyways. Or perhaps, as my one-time Social Studies teacher opined, we really are not that much different from those totalitarian regimes.