Oh, hey...by the way...

(Previously posted.)

Last week I spoke to a retired New York appellate court judge and asked for his thoughts on Section 1031 of the National Defense Authorization Act entitled “Detainee Matters.” He had not heard it mentioned anywhere. Today, I asked the managing partner of a law firm, who has an extensive background in law enforcement and politics, what his take on it was. He, too, had never heard of it. This is troubling.

Mainstream media has been curiously silent on the issue, but there is plenty of concern being expressed throughout cyberspace and in publications that tend to be more concerned about the little things…like say…Congress abrogating the Bill of Rights and doing away with posse comitatus (which bars our military from operating domestically).

Now perhaps at this point you are wondering what the hell I’m talking about. You may be thinking that I have taken complete leave of my senses. You may even be thinking that in America, we have rights and there is no way our elected representatives would enact legislation that tramples on the Constitution and even further, allow the military to detain a U.S. citizen, on U.S. soil…indefinitely…without charge or trial. Well, guess what? The legislation to do just that has passed in the Senate and the House, and is currently on the President’s desk awaiting either his signature or his veto. Don’t take my word for it…research it for yourself.

Earlier today, this came across my Twitter feed: “NDAA 1031 (e) – (http://1.usa.gov/seUEx4) excludes US citizens. Do other criticisms of this bill still exist? If so, let's hear it.” My response was this: “They believe they DO have this authority. They just want to codify it. Prior actions have not faced a constitutional challenge.” I then went on to quote Seema Jilani, who wrote, “The dilemmas and debate lie in the fact that there is a surprising degree of disagreement over exactly what current law does mandate.

Both sides cite the same 2004 Supreme Court decision, Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, to make their argument. Senators Levin and Lindsay Graham (Republican) claim that the ruling affirms that US citizens can be held in military detention indefinitely, and furthermore, that the court approved the holding of Americans as ‘enemy combatants’, including those seized inside the US. For evidence, they point to then Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's phrase, ‘there is no bar to this nation's holding one of its own citizens as an enemy combatant.’

Others, such as Senators Feinstein and Richard J Durbin (Democrat), insist that this argument distorts the Hamdi ruling, which maintained that the Bush administration could hold a citizen captured in Afghanistan as an ‘enemy combatant’. O'Connor stressed, they point out, that the ruling was limited to ‘a United States citizen captured in a foreign combat zone’ while active combat was in progress – an entirely different context from that in which the military could be allowed to capture and hold a US citizen found on US soil. Also of note, Justice O'Connor wrote: ‘Certainly, we agree that indefinite detention for the purpose of interrogation is not authorized.’

So, essentially, the Senate has approved a bill that, in part, reaffirms the status quo – about which there is profound disagreement." (See the full article here.)

I accept the fact that most Americans won’t even note the passing of this legislation (in part because of a “shameful blackout” by mainstream media), and in part because we are a pretty self-absorbed nation as a whole. I even accept the fact that people are so wrapped up in their own lives that they won’t really care until and unless it affects them directly. I am guilty of this, and have always much preferred El’s world to what is going on in the real world. This time, however, I can’t just ignore it. If even one person takes the time to read up on this legislation, then I will feel I’ve accomplished something. Hey…at least someone bothered to say to you…”oh hey…by the way...”