Posted on Dec 23, 2012
Source: TruthDigg
.jpg) |
| AP/Alex Brandon |
Over the past year I and other plaintiffs including Noam Chomsky and Daniel Ellsberg have pressed a lawsuit in the federal courts to nullify Section 1021(b)(2) of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). This egregious section, which permits the government to use the military to detain U.S. citizens, strip them of due process and hold them indefinitely in military detention centers, could have been easily fixed by Congress. The Senate and House had the opportunity this month to include in the 2013 version of the NDAA an unequivocal statement that all U.S. citizens would be exempt from 1021(b)(2), leaving the section to apply only to foreigners. But restoring due process for citizens was something the Republicans and the Democrats, along with the White House, refused to do. The fate of some of our most basic and important rights—ones enshrined in the Bill of Rights as well as the Fourth and Fifth amendments of the Constitution—will be decided in the next few months in the courts. If the courts fail us, a gulag state will be cemented into place.
Sens. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Mike Lee, R-Utah, pushed through the Senate an amendment to the 2013 version of the NDAA. The amendment, although deeply flawed, at least made a symbolic attempt to restore the right to due process and trial by jury. A House-Senate conference committee led by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., however, removed the amendment from the bill last week.
“I was saddened and disappointed that we could not take a step forward to ensure at the very least American citizens and legal residents could not be held in detention without charge or trial,” Feinstein said in a statement issued by her office. “To me that was a no-brainer.”
The House approved the $633 billion NDAA for 2013 in a 315-107 vote late Thursday night. It will now go before the Senate. Several opponents of the NDAA in the House, including Rep. Morgan Griffith, R-Va., cited Congress’ refusal to guarantee due process and trial by jury to all citizens as his reason for voting against the bill. He wrote in a statement after the vote that “American citizens may fear being arrested and indefinitely detained by the military without knowing what they have done wrong.”
The Feinstein-Lee amendment was woefully inadequate. It was probably proposed mainly for its public relations value, but nonetheless it resisted the concerted assault on our rights and sought to calm nervous voters objecting to the destruction of the rule of law. The amendment failed to emphatically state that citizens could never be placed in military custody. Rather, it said citizens could not be placed in indefinite military custody without “trial.” But this could have been a trial by military tribunals. Citizens, under the amendment, could have been barred from receiving due process in a civil court. Still, it was better than nothing. And now we have nothing.
“Congressional moves concerning the NDAA make it clear that Congress as a whole has no stomach for the protection of civil liberties,” said attorney Bruce Afran, who along with attorney Carl Mayer has brought the lawsuit against President Obama in which we are attempting to block Section 1021(b)(2).
The only hero so far in this story is U.S. District Judge Katherine B. Forrest of the Southern District Court of New York. Forrest in September accepted all of our challenges to the law. She issued a permanent injunction invalidating Section 1021(b)(2). Government lawyers asked Forrest for a “stay pending appeal”—meaning the law would go back into effect until the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit issued a ruling in the case. She refused. The government then went directly to the Court of Appeals and asked it for a temporary stay while promising not to detain the plaintiffs or other U.S. citizens under the provision. The Court of Appeals, which will hear oral arguments in January, granted the government’s request for a temporary stay. The law went back into effect. If the Court of Appeals upholds Forrest’s ruling, the case will most likely be before the Supreme Court within weeks.
Click Here to continue reading.
General post,
The author states:
“The fate of some of our most basic and important rights—ones enshrined in the Bill of Rights as well as the Fourth and Fifth amendments of the Constitution—will be decided in the next few months in the courts. If the courts fail us, a gulag state will be cemented into place.”
And therein lies our problem. The Federal Constitution of the United States of America is what is known as, “A First Rule of Recognition.” Our founding fathers created it as a “source” that would definitively stipulate how all other “rules” would be identified. It is a distinct set of binding rules having been enacted in conformity with our national identity and our collective understanding of how the various notions of the “law” have evolved within the context of our understanding–our human consciousness. It codifies that collective perspective on “laws and customs of antiquity” such as the Ten Commandments, or our historical relationship with British Common and Admiralty Law. It defines the way we “look” at the governance of our society through the lens of our diversity, common morality, and the philosophical acumen of our ethos. As such, the Constitution is considered a “single rule of recognition” from which all other “secondary” rules and the laws that are spawned from them receive their legitimacy and their efficacy. [Content of this talking point was developed from the Book: "Taking Rights Seriously, by Ronald Dworkin, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass, 1977]
So, what we have here is an attempt on the part of a political buffoonery to circumnavigate and, therefore, abrogate a “Single Rule of Recognition” through the use of a law (the NDAA) that was developed under the auspices of a Secondary Rule of Recognition (the Patriot Act). The concept of the Child “conceiving” the Parent. This is bullshit. The U.S. Constitution cannot be abrogated by an feckless, uniformed, and ignorant act of Congress as the Existence of Congress is DEFINED by this First Rule of Recognition therefore, to abrogate it would, in effect, “dissolve” Congress. How stupid can they become? I submit that their tiny left-brain dominated minds will, in the future, exhibit even greater vacuity than that which they already have. And we’ll still elect them to office won’t we …
Are any of you beginning to understand just how stupid our political leadership and legal mountebanks have become in the process of time?
WHAT TO DO?
Instead of creating a Petition for the President to Consider that demands the disclosure (by our infamous shadow government) of information regarding extra-terrestrial visitation or one that demands secession of participating states, why aren’t we creating a petition that demands strict adherence to the Federal Constitution as a precursor to good government? Why aren’t we engaged in a “letter-writing” campaign of “Biblical Proportions” that demand an accounting for an idiot Congress for attempting to construct a social paradigm that is NOT ALLOWED … does everyone understand this … IT IS NOT ALLOWED by the Federal Constitution?
ANSWER: Because we’re not THINKING that way. We’re not in control because we THINK that THEY are in control and nothing is going to “Change” until we change the way we think.
Uh, Love and Light,
SaS
I hear you, SaS, agree with you, and sympathize with you. And if we were going to continue on a linear, historical, karmic timeline, this issue would need to be played out to a conclusion – say, conservatives pulling out of the Republican Party (which has failed, by and large, to represent them, in opting to represent welfare for the well-off and keep the masses quiet with payoffs) and starting their own party in a big way; pushing the Constitution ‘thing’ from there until the Democrat Party admits that they consider it a dead letter, and want to let Obama run the show from his perch as the unitary executive that Cheney & his NeoCon cohorts were trying to establish for THEIR frontman; the effluent hits the distributor – from that or any number of other reasons now coming to a head, like a monetary collapse – and the country verges on civil war, with the govt of the day already sitting on millions of rounds of ammo for DHS domestic use, and with 800 FEMA camps scattered throughout the 10 sectors that the feds have already put in place to be activated once they orchestrate a declaration of Martial Law by our Dear Leader. But I happen to think that it is the End of History, and the play is over, and we can shuck off our current roles, and get down to the REAL business at hand: that of Ascension, out of the 3D matrix that we have been incarcerated in for long enough.
Which may be too harsh a word for it; for the opportunity we have had in it to learn lessons, and grow in consciousness, and prepare for just such an event as we are faced with now.
Consider. The evidence is in of the reality of reincarnation; thus, of the fact that there is a Plan in and Purpose to ‘the universe’ – to life. And that We Are simply One Another; just playing, and exchanging, parts, in the drama that we have created here on planet Earth; now ready to leave the play-acting behind, and opt for the real thing. Because once we get – really get – that ‘they’ are ‘Us’, we can no longer pretend that we are separate from one another. And how long will you continue, e.g., to be gulled into going to war with ‘them’ once you realize that there is no ‘them’. That there is only Us. Sparks of divinity off the One Divine Source. Spiritual beings having a human experience. Brothers and sisters in dualistic physical incarnation; for, as I say, a Purpose. Which, I would say, is to make our way back to total Unity with the ineffable All That Is. The answer to all of which is Love. Not any further false separation into ‘us’ and ‘them’.
And thus the ‘economic system’ of the (very near) future: such brothers and sisters sharing goods and services with one another – and giving of their best in the process – out of a higher motive than the age-old one of profit-making. Out of the highest motive that there could ever be: out of gratitude to our Creator for life with meaning. Out of, in a word: Love. And just so do we do away with the harmful effects of the profit-motive era (drugs that warp our minds; terrible poverty in the shadow of plenty; etc. etc.), and allow the immediate introduction of such technology as free energy devices; and so forth and so on. A game changer. THE game changer; into the New Era. The Great Turning. The Golden Age. Whatever name one wants to fasten on it, give it, identify with.
And which scenario precludes any such civil war as is pending at this time. And which also does away with the serious confrontation that is brewing over the Constitution. Because it got us here. If barely. But we made it.
To our Next Steps.
If we will, now, take them, into that different scenario as outlined above; away from the dark end to the story that we are facing, without this gift, this Opportunity to transcend our differences, and recognize our Oneness. As we go up in consciousness to a new level of reality; out of the deep darkness of 3D separation from our roots in the heavens.
Relative separation, that is. God has always been with us. Willing us on. Loving us on. To where we have now come: a culmination point. The end of one ‘calendar’/record. And the beginning of another. Just on a higher level, is all. Said with a bit of a smile. (Hey – It’s to be celebrated!)
Oh – and yes; there is also that Disclosure thing; our galactic neighbors, just waiting to welcome us into the club……once we have put our war-making tendencies behind us.
Eloquently stated, kibitzer3, eloquently stated and “TRUTHFULLY” advanced as much common sense!
Love and Light,
SaS
Thanks for the posting, Jean. This case needs to be followed. It is extremely important.
And thanks to Chris Hedges et al for staying the course with it. This transcends political affiliations It is, simply and fundamentally, about our civil rights: Do we have them, or not.
There can hardly be a more important question.
Very interesting blog and you have bit off quite a challenge. It is the only way to get things done though. Congratulations to you for your strength and courage. I will return and I hope you will visit my blog. Hugs, Barbara