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Ceding Liberty to Terror: Senate Votes Against Due-Process Rights

Is it lawful for the president to order any American held indefinitely as a terrorist, without formal charges, evidence presented in open court, a trial by jury, or a standard of "guilty beyond a reasonable doubt"? The U.S. Senate had a chance Wednesday to assert that no, a president does not possess that power -- that the United States Constitution guarantees due process.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) urged her colleagues to seize the opportunity. "We as a Congress are being asked, for the first time certainly since I have been in this body, to affirmatively authorize that an American citizen can be picked up and held indefinitely without being charged or tried. That is a very big deal, because in 1971 we passed a law that said you cannot do this. This was after the internment of Japanese-American citizens in World War II," she said. "What we are talking about here is the right of our government, as specifically authorized in a law by Congress, to say that a citizen of the United States can be arrested and essentially held without trial forever."

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) agreed.

"If we believe an American citizen is guilty or will be guilty of acts of terrorism, can we detain them indefinitely?" he said. "Can we ignore their constitutional rights and hold them indefinitely, without warning them of their right to remain silent, without advising them of their right to counsel, without giving them the basic protections of our Constitution? I don't believe that should be the standard."

In the end, however, Feinstein and Durbin lost the debate.

The U.S. Senate refused to affirm that American citizens arrested in the United States shouldn't be subject to indefinite military detention on the president's order. Senator Feinstein's amendment to that effect went down in defeat with 55 historic votes against it.

Here are the senators who lost, the ones who wanted to protect the rights of U.S. citizens to due process:

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc ... ts/249388/

i'll wait and see if obama signs it or vetoes it before i comment.

obama is too busy with fund raisers

Hopefully he'll veto this.

Anyone know how close we are to the end of the Congressional Session? If it's more than 10 days away then he will have to veto it, or it will just become law anyway.

deadly habit wrote:obama is too busy with fund raisers

Too busy ensuring he stays in power than keeping safe the rights of the citizens he leads? Priorities eh..

wilson wrote:

deadly habit wrote:obama is too busy with fund raisers

Too busy ensuring he stays in power than keeping safe the rights of the citizens he leads? Priorities eh..

politics in a nutshell

I don't mind giving up my freedom as long as the terrorists don't win.



Wait what were the terrorists' goals again?

I love the american use of the word terrorist. This is a fucking war. You guys were involved before any acts of "terrorism" took place.

that's the truly scary part, that there is no clear cut definition for terrorist, especially when you see politicians tossing terms like cyberterrorists around for script kiddies or even real hackers
pretty much comes down to if you piss off the wrong people, get labeled a terrorist and can be whisked off to never be heard from again

"Maybe this will wake some people up.. or then again, maybe people are that brainwashed into thinking the US government is the world's savior?"

They could label me a terrorist just for saying that. If you're not with the phony Government, you're obviously Al Qaeda.

Text from the actual bill:

Section 1031 wrote:(e) AUTHORITIES.—Nothing in this section shall be
11 construed to affect existing law or authorities, relating to
12 the detention of United States citizens, lawful resident
13 aliens of the United States or any other persons who are
14 captured or arrested in the United States.

Section 1032 wrote:10 (1) UNITED STATES CITIZENS.—The require
11ment to detain a person in military custody under
12 this section does not extend to citizens of the United
13 States.

(2) LAWFUL RESIDENT ALIENS.—The require
15 ment to detain a person in military custody under
16 this section does not extend to a lawful resident
17 alien of the United States on the basis of conduct
18 taking place within the United States, except to the
19 extent permitted by the Constitution of the United
20 States.

deadly habit wrote:

wilson wrote:

deadly habit wrote:obama is too busy with fund raisers

Too busy ensuring he stays in power than keeping safe the rights of the citizens he leads? Priorities eh..

politics in a nutshell

politicians are by nature evil (obama is no exception).

This is like this one book i read, Little Brother. It's about these kids who hack game systems or something, and he gets labeled as a terrorist, and is taken away and water boarded, and it's horrible. I'm so disappointed with the way my country is going right now.

Freedom and America what a joke

mIrReN wrote:Freedom and America what a joke

ello police state

if anyone of the u.s. heads want to leave the country => http://www.dubstepforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=177376

You lot should read "Bad Men" by Clive Stafford Smith, what the USA military has been doing to random people in Guantanamo and other secret prisons around the world because they have been accused of being terrorists, often without any actual evidence of wrongdoing, is completely reprehensible, has done no good and completely tarnished America's (and the UK's) reputation as 'the moral crusader'.

You might not know but holding people prisoner without trial is already quite commonplace OUTSIDE the USA (the UK government probably does it in some way too, no doubt) as people have no constitutional rights and it makes it easier to do whatever's needed to make a case to continue to detain them, groups with vested interests like Haliburton (who renovated Guantanamo and help maintain it) definitely prolong the 'war on terror' as it keeps them in jobs. It also becomes very hard for politicians to go back on their word after asserting that people held captive are 'definitely enemy combatants' and they have spent $X-million on their incarceration (even after some prisoners were finally released from Guantanamo with no criminal or war crime convictions nobody wanted them, only Albania would accept several Uighurs to a refugee camp out of the entire world's states).

The problem of such a liberal application of the word 'terrorist' is that if you want political opponents removed you call them 'terrorists' because then their behaviour becomes inexcusable against their supposed targets who are then 'defending themselves in retaliation'... Look at groups like Chechnyan separatists in Russia and Uighurs in China, both groups have a legitimate beef in some way but are denied the right to contest their point openly so they resort to violence as a last resort but the state they target now has international support against them in a kind of 'you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours' way - I'm not saying I condone violence but people's views should be respected at least.

Once you detain someone any information they are likely to have had becomes useless anyway, everyone else involved catches on and makes efforts to mitigate whatever consequences this might cause to the original plan. Same reason why torturing people doesn't get you anywhere as 24 hours later that information will be useless (they are also less likely to remember critical information under stress).

TL_ wrote:Hopefully he'll veto this.

he cannot though, can he? i do not have a perfect knowledge of the American system, but if I'm not mistaken the veto can be reversed if 2/3rds of the Senators approve the bill, and in the case I seem to read everywhere that 93 of them voted in favour of it, against 7 senators who were against it. I might be wrong though?

He won't be able to veto it, nor should he really since it is the entire defense budget bill for the next year.

you know it's fucked up when rand paul (ron paul's son) a teaparty member is speaking up about it

If one of the pauls get vocal about something that's usually a red flag for me not to buy the hype haha