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Ron Paul See other Ron Paul Articles Title: New Bipartisan Bill Could Give Any President the Power to Imprison U.S. Citizens in Military Detention Forever One of the most outrageous acts of Barack Obama’s presidency was his failure to veto the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2012. The fiscal year 2012 NDAA included provisions that appeared to both codify and expand a power the executive branch had previously claimed to possess — namely, the power to hold individuals, including U.S. citizens, in military detention indefinitely — based on the Authorization to Use Military Force passed by Congress three days after 9/11. The New York Times warned that the bill could “give future presidents the authority to throw American citizens into prison for life without charges or a trial.” Not surprisingly, Obama’s decision generated enormous outcry across the political spectrum, from Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, on the right to Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., on the left. However, the NDAA did provide some weak restraints on the executive branch’s ability to use this power. In theory, the NDAA’s provisions only apply to someone involved with the 9/11 attacks or who “substantially supported al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces.” But now, incredibly enough, a bipartisan group of six lawmakers, led by Sens. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., and Tim Kaine, D-Va., is proposing a new AUMF that would greatly expand who the president can place in indefinite military detention, all in the name of restricting presidential power. If the Corker-Kaine bill becomes law as currently written, any president, including Donald Trump, could plausibly claim extraordinarily broad power to order the military to imprison any U.S. citizen, captured in America or not, and hold them without charges essentially forever. Even opponents of the bill do not believe this is the goal of Corker, Kaine et al. “I think they’re acting in good faith,” says Elizabeth Goitein, co-director of the Liberty & National Security Program at the Brennan Center at New York University Law School. Kaine himself has explained that they authored the bill because “for too long, Congress has given presidents a blank check. We’ve let the 9/11 and Iraq War authorizations get stretched. … Our proposal finally repeals those authorizations and makes Congress do its job by weighing in on where, when, and with who we are at war.” But thanks to a combination of sloppy drafting and clear reluctance to take the executive branch head-on, Corker and Kaine’s proposed AUMF could do the opposite, handing genuinely tyrannical powers over to the president. Christopher Anders of the ACLU characterizes the bill as “a legislative dumpster fire.” Join Our Newsletter Original reporting. Fearless journalism. Delivered to you. I’m in “There’s such a desire to put Congress back in the game,” says Goitein. The perspective of the new AUMF’s authors, she believes, seems to be “we have to do something. This is something. Therefore, we have to do this.” Understanding the terrible potential consequences of this bill requires a close look at the relevant history and law. Can the president hold U.S. citizens apprehended far away from a battlefield without charges in the military detention system? During peacetime, the answer is obvious: absolutely not. It would be one of the clearest violations of the Bill of Rights imaginable. But this changes in wartime. The 2001 AUMF did not give explicitly give this power to the executive branch, but the George W. Bush administration claimed that this language from the resolution provided it implicitly: Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 1.
#1. To: Ada (#0)
Obongo did something right and Ron Paul opposed it? This is really scary no matter how they slice it, but it seems almost superfluous when presidents are passively being allowed unltd powers to do evil. How many innocent people did Obongo murder with drones without reference to any law?
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