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“The U.S. Supreme Court Decision … Means the Nation Has Entered a Post-Constitutional Era”
Painting by Anthony Freda: www.AnthonyFreda.com
“We Are No Longer a Nation Ruled By Laws”
Pulitzer prize winning reporter Chris Hedges – along with journalist Naomi Wolf, Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, activist Tangerine Bolen and others – sued the government to join the NDAA’s allowance of the indefinite detention of Americans.
The trial judge in the case asked the government attorneys 5 times whether journalists like Hedges could be indefinitely detained simply for interviewing and then writing about bad guys.
The government refused to promise that journalists like Hedges won’t be thrown in a dungeon for the rest of their lives without any right to talk to a judge.
The trial judge ruled that the indefinite detention bill was unconstitutional, holding:
This Court rejects the government’s suggestion that American citizens can be placed in military detention indefinitely, for acts they could not predict might subject them to detention.
But the court of appeal overturned that decision, based upon the assumption that limited the NDAA to non-U.S. citizens:
We thus conclude, consistent with the text and buttressed in part by the legislative history, that Section 1021 [of the 2012 NDAA] means this: With respect to individuals who are not citizens, are not lawful resident aliens, and are not captured or arrested within the United States, the President’s [Authorization for Use of Military Force] authority includes the authority to detain those responsible for 9/11 as well as those who were a part of, or substantially supported, al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners—a detention authority that Section 1021 concludes was granted by the original AUMF. But with respect to citizens, lawful resident aliens, or individuals captured or arrested in the United States, Section 1021 simply says nothing at all.
The court of appeal ignored the fact that the co-sponsors of the indefinite detention law said it does apply to American citizens, and that top legal scholars agree.
Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal of the case, thus blessing and letting stand the indefinite detention law stand unchanged.
The court of appeal’s Orwellian reasoning may sound – at first blush – like it might be a good thing. After all, the court said there’s no indication that the indefinite detention provision will be applied against U.S. citizens.
However, by refusing to strike down the law and insist that any future laws explicitly exempt U.S. citizens, it leaves discretion in the hands of the executive branch.
The effect of the decision will be to allow the U.S. government to kidnap and indefinitely detain U.S. citizens who protest or dissent against the government … and the courts will never hear any legal challenge from the prisoners. The detainee will not get to say:
The courts said the indefinite detention law isn’t written to apply to U.S. citizens, so you have to let me go!
And he won’t get to say:
You’re confusing me with another John Smith, and I can prove it!
After all, prisoners can be held under the indefinite detention bill without trial, without being allowed to present evidence or hearing the evidence against them, without letting the citizen consult with a lawyer, and without even charging the citizen with any crime.
So – if you’re thrown into a hole somewhere – no one will even hear your story.
Chris Hedges noted in November:
If [the indefinite detention law] stands it will mean, as [the trial judge] pointed out in her 112-page opinion, that whole categories of Americans—and here you can assume dissidents and activists—will be subject to seizure by the military and indefinite and secret detention.
Constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead agrees:
No matter what the Obama administration may say to the contrary, actions speak louder than words, and history shows that the U.S. government is not averse to locking up its own citizens for its own purposes. What the NDAA does is open the door for the government to detain as a threat to national security anyone viewed as a troublemaker. According to government guidelines for identifying domestic extremists—a word used interchangeably with terrorists, that technically applies to anyone exercising their First Amendment rights in order to criticize the government.
As does constitutional attorney William Olson:
The personal freedoms of Americans are now in tatters following the refusal of the U.S. Supreme Court to hear an appeal to knock down the National Defense Authorization Act, constitutional and election law attorney William Olson says.
“This is a rather remarkable shredding of the Bill of Rights,”…. he explained that the language of the act is so “loose,” that anybody can be picked up for any reason.
“The president of the United States … [has] this power to detain indefinitely without charges, without trial, without an arrest warrant, without a grand jury, just to be able to hold someone who they think might be a threat of some sort,” Olson said.
***
“How are you going to challenge it when the black SUV rolls away from your house and no one even knows where you’ve been taken?”
If you think they’re crying wolf, just remember that the CIA director relabeled “dissidents” as “terrorists” in 1972 so that he could continue spying on them … and nothing has changed.
Daniel Ellsberg notes that Obama’s claimed power to indefinitely detain people without charges or access to a lawyer or the courts is a power that even King George – the guy we fought the Revolutionary War against – didn’t claim. And former judge and adjunct professor of constitutional law Andrew Napolitano points out that Obama’s claim that he can indefinitely detain prisoners even after they are acquitted of their crimes is a power that even Hitler and Stalin didn’t claim.
Access to justice is already being severely curtailed in America. Even when the prisoner is afforded a trial, it is becoming more and more common for the government to prosecute cases based upon “secret evidence” that they don’t show to the defendant, his lawyer … or sometimes even the judge hearing the case. The government uses “secret evidence” to spy on Americans, prosecute leaking or terrorism charges (even against U.S. soldiers) and even to assassinate people. And see this and this. Secret witnesses are being used in some cases. And sometimes lawyers are not even allowed to read their own briefs. Indeed, even the laws themselves are now starting to be kept secret.
But prisoners under the indefinite detention bill have it much worse: they don’t get any trial or opportunity to talk to a judge, any access to a lawyer … or perhaps any information about what they’re even accused of doing or why they were nabbed in the first place.
Chris Hedges notes today:
The U.S. Supreme Court decision … means the nation has entered a post-constitutional era. It means that extraordinary rendition of U.S. citizens on U.S. soil by our government is legal. It means that the courts, like the legislative and executive branches of government, exclusively serve corporate power—one of the core definitions of fascism. It means that the internal mechanisms of state are so corrupted and subservient to corporate power that there is no hope of reform or protection for citizens under our most basic constitutional rights. It means that the consent of the governed—a poll by OpenCongress.com showed that this provision had a 98 percent disapproval rating—is a cruel joke. And it means that if we do not rapidly build militant [Washington's Blog believes in non-violence] mass movements to overthrow corporate tyranny, including breaking the back of the two-party duopoly that is the mask of corporate power, we will lose our liberty.
“In declining to hear the case Hedges v. Obama and declining to review the NDAA, the Supreme Court has turned its back on precedent dating back to the Civil War era that holds that the military cannot police the streets of America,” said attorney Carl Mayer, who along with Bruce Afran devoted countless unpaid hours to the suit. “This is a major blow to civil liberties. It gives the green light to the military to detain people without trial or counsel in military installations, including secret installations abroad. There is little left of judicial review of presidential action during wartime.”
***
The law went back on the books [after the court of appeal reversed the trial judge's decision]. My lawyers and I surmised that this was because the administration was already using the law to detain U.S. citizens in black sites, most likely dual citizens with roots in countries such as Pakistan, Afghanistan, Somalia and Yemen…. Government attorneys, when asked by Judge Forrest, refused to say whether or not the government was already using the law, buttressing our suspicion that it was in use.
***
In refusing to hear our lawsuit the courts have overturned nearly 150 years of case law that repeatedly holds that the military has no jurisdiction over civilians.
***
The goals of corporate capitalism are increasingly indistinguishable from the goals of the state. The political and economic systems are subservient to corporate profit. Debate between conventional liberals and conservatives has been replaced by empty political theater and spectacle. Corporations, no matter which politicians are in office, loot the Treasury, escape taxation, push down wages, break unions, dismantle civil society, gut regulation and legal oversight, control information, prosecute endless war and dismantle public institutions and programs that include schools, welfare and Social Security. And elected officials, enriched through our form of legalized corporate bribery, have no intention of halting the process.
The government, by ignoring the rights and needs of ordinary citizens, is jeopardizing its legitimacy. This is dangerous. When a citizenry no longer feels that it can find justice within the organs of power, when it feels that the organs of power are the enemies of freedom and economic advancement, it makes war on those organs. Those of us who are condemned as radicals, idealists and dreamers call for basic reforms that, if enacted, will make peaceful reform possible. But corporate capitalists, now unchecked by state power and dismissive of the popular will, do not see the fires they are igniting. The Supreme Court ruling on our challenge is one more signpost on the road to dystopia.
***
A ruling elite that accrues for itself this kind of total power, history has shown, eventually uses it.
And Tangerine Bolen writes:
The Supreme Court has made it abundantly clear, first via Citizens United, then most recently via McCutcheon v. FTC, that corporations are “persons” whose “free speech” must be protected at all costs – including the cost of democracy – while our rights – the rights of living, breathing people, the fundamental right of due process and our fundamental rights of free speech and association – those no longer matter. They are to be trampled.
Under the war on terror, the United States government has trampled upon the fundamental human rights of people around the world since 9/11. The Bush administration manufactured a false war based on carefully crafted lies, false evidence and sickening manipulation. In the wake of that war, our courts prefer to continue to defer to a disingenuous national security narrative that has arisen out of the lies, paranoia, and incredible lawbreaking of our own government, including kidnapping, torturing, indefinitely imprisoning, and assassinating people with impunity – all of this against both reason and international law.
We are no longer a nation ruled by laws. [She's right.] We are nation ruled by men who have so steeped themselves in a false narrative that at the same time they are exponentially increasing the ranks of terrorists, they are destroying the rule of law itself. [Indeed, we’ve gone from a nation of laws to a nation of powerful men making one-sided laws to protect their own interests … in secret. Government folks are using laws to crush dissent. It’s gotten so bad that even U.S. Supreme Court justices are saying that we are descending into tyranny.] It is madness upon madness – the classic tale of becoming the evil you purport to fight while believing you remain righteous.
We have tried to stand up to this madness: we are outnumbered, outspent, and outgunned – a David intrepidly fighting a Goliath that spans the planet and has the power to shape our “reality” – thus shaping what the courts even see. We have sacrificed greatly to do this – and yet we would do it all again.
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Please expand - what was done under the table? News suppression, creation, favors for political friends / smears for foes?
If it's not in the history books, please put it here so others may know.
ED
When it concerns billionaires doing bad things.. I learned at an early age, if I spill the beans, my family and I disappear badly. Never piss off billionaires.
"Please expand...." All you mention and then some, from local to international levels. The world of MSM is a tool which is well scripted for the masses.
Fuck Chris Hedges. He put it into the mold of how dare they apply these draconian acts to US citizens. So he is giving a pass to applying it to non Americans.
All of the rights that he (and others) are complaining are being trampled are rights endowed by our maker,; God doesn't give a flying fuck what nationality you have.
The US government should have no more right to lock up without a trial a Canadian or cave dweller than they do US citizens.
It is the only way he had a chance of winning. And even then he lost. Think about that for a while.
On behalf of Canadians everywhere, I thank you. Want a double-double, buddy?
I hope the BRICS can create their own economic bloc. The US hegemony must be dismantled. I think it will given time but it will be brutally painful for those in the uS while it happens.
The US hegemony is getting dismantled as I type. And it's going to happen like people go broke: Slowly at first, then all at once.
US hegemony will be dismantled and replaced by Globalist Internationalist hegemony - the real leaders care less about America or Americans. We are the engine that drives globalism - once they are done using the US to destroy or subjugate their enemies -we are next. Why do you think they have been stockpiling massive weapons by Homeland Security -it's not to fight off an invasion from Mexico or canada, I assure you of that.
Don’t Blame Capitalism for Wall Street’s Corruption and Lawlessness
Thanks for providing the current information George, I wouldn't have heard it anywhere else that I frequent, and even though I gave up on MSM news, certainly would not hear it there.
"We search these documents in vain for one that survives its usefulness to the stronger party." -Haile Sallasie (Addressing the League of Nations.) This may also be a good epitaph for the dollar, the Constitution and the USA.
Exactly; Might doesn't make Right; but it sure as hell gets the job done.
T he Soviet Union had a Constitution during it's whole existence; and in its mature form for most of the lifetime of the Soviet Union; it guaranteed free expression and that the will of the people was the basic validation of the law; at the same time the ruling oligarchy snatched citizens by the tens of thousands, by force, from their homes; and tortured and murdered them.
Secret courts, secret laws, secret charges, secret torture, secret evidence and secret verdicts....
Totalitarian fascism on its face. I'm dumbfounded the reaction to the danger has been so muted.
Muted by the media.
baaaa, baaaaa, baaaa -damned sheeple
Most people don't even know that this danger exists. You want to convince people that we've got problems? Show them videos of SWAT going into people's houses on no knock raids and shooting people late at night, or shooting their dogs. Show them the video of James Boyd getting shot. Local cops doing the dirty deeds is something that people can comprehend. They have seen these guys personally.
And then understand that some people like their police state.
Fair point. File under "All politics are local."
Yes, maybe 20% are good with fascism.
SCOTUS authorized organized government prayer meetings today. how fast can we get rid of these people
They're appointed for life.
Really fast, if you can get in touch with the professionals who weren't on the grassy knoll in Dallas.
Not fast enough, grateful. Not fast enough.
Wether you belive or not those MFers should pray. It reminds them that there is possibly a power greater than Gummint and that they may be judged by their actions. The souless godless Gummint MFers think they are GOD.
What the grateful means is that there's a reason freedom of religion is in the first amendment and why many of the europeans who flocked here were escaping religious persecution. Freedom of faith is the utter foundation of free thinking. Like everything else, our third branch used to understand that this is a slippery slope. Whether they have lost thier thinking skills or have been bought, the result is the same destruction.
Yah. Some of this was tolerable under Bush for maybe a 90 day period, stretch that to a year, but since then it's been ... bad. Ah well, I remember the olden days.
GW, I did not even have to read the whole article. THIS is a piece of journalism that merits note. Good job on exposing the slow elimination of our rights, that the Liberal Courts are part of. For years, I have witnessed liberal judges 'legislate law from the bench' and there was no one to stop them. (the Ninth Circuit Court? Yeah right!) The Courts are run by liberal judges that make law via the bench and the Congress and Legislatures are too affraid to challenge them, so the new law, stands. Judges need to be vetted more closely. Bring out the dice and slice!
If you think this is a liberal vs conservative, or Democrat vs Republican, or Red vs Blue thing, you need to step back and take another look.
Seriously, step back and think about it. In terms of actions, is there any difference between Bush and Obama?
They are two sides of the same coin.
there's usually one pre-selected operative for the oligarchs. You weren't presented with a choice between Obama and Bush; but you did have a choice between Romney and Obama; you failed. And this after four years of lying and government by the lobbyist; of the lobbyist and for the lobbyist. Inexcusable. In reality you're getting what you deserve.
Chief Justice John Marshall (appx. 1802 to mid 1820's) did more harm to this country than both of the scums Bush and O'Blah blah ever inflicked. His Rulings set up the U.S. by his desire for a strong central government and most of the corruption that followed. All it takes some times is the wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time. Milestones
Ironically one of the professional shooters from the grassy knoll in Dallas, (80%+probability), named Charles, nickname Chuck; later took a contract to snipe a Federal Judge; he only wounded him, and worse yet he was arrested and convicted. After a few years in the Federal Pen. he started talking to his friends inside about the possibiity of "telling what really happened"; but then he died. But not of course, of old age.
I vote for Onan's version. Corruption knows no label. You seriously think the bankers, energy monopolists, food giants and warmongers operate under one party or philosophy. They actually have no "philosophy" just a very concrete goal.
The problem with that argument is this:
A slave who was a resident in a slave state, if that state violated his perceived natural right or any right for that matter, HE COULD NOT move to another state that was more friendly to his freedom claims.
That's not acceptable. Treating humans as property is not acceptable. Treating your citizens as property in another nation is not acceptable.
Imagine that Canada imprisoned all (Pick any group) upon crossing the border into Canada. Imagine that mercenaries would kidnap (Pick any group) in the USA and take them there and force them into slavery in Canada for profit.
We would be at war with Canada within a week, and THAT is what happened with the Confederacy. You cannot live next to a nation that violates the rights of your citizens and treats them as sub-human property, kidnaps them to their nation, deprives them of their natural rights.
Golly, if your last statement is true, then how does Canada endure living next to the US?
They don't.
When I talk with Canadians about travel and airfare and such, I explicitly tell them DO NOT transit ANY USA airport, even if the fare is half (which it often is - honeypot). The stories I have heard are becoming more and more common, and you are in for a world of trouble if you dare to fly from Thailand or Amsterdam to a USA stopover on your way north.
The Dc US has been criminally operating outside the Constitution for some time. Most glaringly since December 23, 1913.
Now what actually happened in this case is that the guillotine list just got longer.
But the globalists needed the fed to fund WW1 and Ww2 9and future wars) -and of course the incoime tax to pay interest to the banksters.
They don't deserve a new guillotine. A rusty one that needs multiple strikes would be more like it.
A special guillotine that is dull as a butter knife for legislators and judges.....and Ovomit & Holder.
No need to reinvent the wheel, folks.
Ever seen a car crusher at work?
Or a big wood chipper (feet first)?
Yippee.
All hail the douchebags in government drag.
The Alice-in-Wonderland Queen says
"Off with their heads first, then the trial".
The Inquisition says
"Torture a confession first, then burn the self-incriminated at the stake".
The Supine Court says
"First the black site forever, then afterwards file an appeal".
No chilling effect violating free speech or the press in any of that say the legal pundits.
And the Hildebeast tells Ed Snowden (after his indictment for espionage), Turn yourself in, get locked in a Supermax, then 'join the debate' and 'avail yourself of our whistleblower protections.'
Yeah, RIGHT ...
Wasn't that amazing. That's real Chutzpa, for you.
Everybody in Ukraine that doesn't want to join the EU is now a terrorist.
sure, because it's all about the EU in Ukraine, eh?
It's completely obvious that it's all about the EU in Ukraine; considering that the EU and NATO are tools for the USA Empire.
Everybody in the world who doesn't want to accept the NWO
matches the official criteria of "terrorist".
"You're either with is or against us." At the time I only thought that applied to al Qaeda. How naive I was.
Well. I guess that's that.
Now we all really have to choose...
Eh?
What Nation? What is a nation? The United States is a part of the planet defined by boundaries. The systems within the boundaries are controlled from Brussels.
At this time but maybe not tomorrow.