NOVANEWS
ED NOTE : If Sherwood Ross’ article Defense Authorization Act Will Destroy Bill of Rights is accurate when it states that the Military will be authorized to arrest and hold anyone without access to legal representation, habeas corpus, or trial, then the Law itself is unconstitutional and all it will take is a finding in the US Supreme Court to that effect to nullify it.
It is quite simple and straightforward. The Constitution of the Unites States of America clearly prohibits the Congress from passing any law which is in conflict or contradiction with any of the guaranteed provisions of the Constitution or its amendments. If the Congress wishes to pass such a law, it must first amend and gain ratification of suspension of those rights of habeas corpus, legal representation, and trial which are fundamental to the Constitution.
Now…” finding in the US Supreme Court” just might take some doing but, that is the Law as established by the foremost and fundamental legal document in the USA, including this one, must derive, and depend.
This law seems to be in direct violation of the principles of Articles I, IV,V and VI at a minimum…that is forty percent of the guarantees of personal Freedoms granted directly, unequivocally and irrevocably to the people of the US.
http://www.archives.gov/
exhibits/charters/bill_of_ rights_transcript.html The Bill of Rights (Amendments 1 through 10)
Senators Carl Levin (D-MI) and John McCain (R-AZ) are the sponsors of the Bill
by Sherwood Ross
The grim face of totalitarianism is emerging in the National Defense Authorization Act(NDAA) now before Congress.
This bill is the last mile post on America’s sad, well-traveled road to the butcher shop of dictatorship. We have been headed that way for some time and, with a little help from Congress, we’ll arrive there shortly, putting an ugly end to the American experiment. The Senate December 1st passed the bill by a vote of 93-7.
In the name of “defense,” NDAA underwrites $662-billion for continued U.S. aggression in our many foreign wars while, on the domestic front, it incinerates the last surviving shreds of the Bill of Rights. According to the American Civil Liberties Union(ACLU), it authorizes presidents “to order the military to pick up and imprison people, including U.S. citizens, without charging them or putting them on trial.” (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) So much for Amendment VI to our Constitution that “the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial.”
Just destroying your protection against arbitrary arrest and imprisonment means the bill’s authors Senators Carl Levin of Michigan and John McCain of Arizona don’t have to bother with junking anything else. Once you’re imprisoned you won’t need any other “stinkin’ rights.”
The ACLU charges the provisions of NDAA “were negotiated by a small group of members of Congress, in secret, and without proper congressional review (and), are inconsistent with fundamental American values embodied in the Constitution….(our) fundamental freedoms are on the line.”
A few years back, President Carter denounced the Patriot Act for authorizing federal agents “to search people’s homes and businesses secretly, to confiscate property without any deadline or without giving notice that the intrusion had taken place, and to collect without notice personal information on American citizens including their medical histories, books checked out of libraries, and goods they purchase.” The NDAA is far worse than that.
According to Noam Chomsky, the arbitrary arrest philosophy in this country dates back to the Bush regime. “The current (Bush) government,” he writes in “Imperial Ambitions”(Metropolitan Books, 2005), “has claimed rights that go beyond any precedents, including even the right to arrest citizens, hold them in detention without access to their family or lawyers, and do so indefinitely, without charges.”
“What the American People are witnessing now with this new legislation is the further development of an American Police State into a Military Dictatorship, a process that was started by the so-called USA Patriot Act in 2001,” says Professor Francis Boyle, the constitutional law authority at the University of Illinois, Champaign.
University of Illinois Law Professor Francis A. Boyle
“If it is enacted into law, America will lose all pretense of having our Military subjected to the control of democratically elected civilian leaders as originally envisioned and required by the Constitution. Our experiment in 1776 will have failed,” adds Boyle, author of “Tackling America’s Toughest Questions”(Clarity Press.)
President Obama is already exercising his kingly right to rain Hellfire missiles from drone assault planes down on any human being anywhere on the planet without a legal authorization. This is called assassination as it is utterly devoid of any semblance of rudimentary justice. Unfortunately, the president appears to have no qualms about his actions. Will such a man hesitate to arrest Americans on suspicion and imprison them for years, or worse, without trial?
Paul Craig Roberts, Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury in the Reagan Admin. and confirmed by the US Senate