Such other matters as the President considers appropriate.

[nancylebov]

McCain and Leiberman have proposed a bill which allows for indefinite detention of American citizens at the president's whim.

Niemöller [1] is not mocked.

The whole point of "enemy combatant" was to put people outside the law, so that the government could do whatever it pleased to them. The law isn't an absolutely reliable protection, but it's a good bit better than nothing.

It was obvious to me that there was no reason for American government lawlessness to be limited to people who aren't American citizens.

I don't take the abuse of non-Americans lightly. A good bit of the anger in this post is for the Americans who thought indefinite detention without charge could only happen to someone else.

SEC. 5. DETENTION WITHOUT TRIAL OF UNPRIVILEGED ENEMY BELLIGERENTS.

An individual, including a citizen of the United States, determined to be an unprivileged enemy belligerent under section 3(c)(2) in a manner which satisfies Article 5 of the Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War may be detained without criminal charges and without trial for the duration of hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners in which the individual has engaged, or which the individual has purposely and materially supported, consistent with the law of war and any authorization for the use of military force provided by Congress pertaining to such hostilities.

Information about the bill from Glenn Greenwald, from an article at The Huffington Post which I found out about it because Steve Barnes was interested in the people from the French Television show who weren't willing to give big electric shocks.

I'm feeling let down by my friendslist. What happened to the glory days when every frightening thing the government was doing was urgent news? Teapartyers behaving like assholes is not a substitute.

Perhaps I'm being unfair-- I don't follow facebook or twitter, and lj's been kind of quiet lately. Has anyone else heard about this monstrous bill?

Anyway, here are the sponsors of the bill:
Sen. John McCain [R-AZ]

Scott Brown [R-MA]

Saxby Chambliss [R-GA]

James Inhofe [R-OK]

George LeMieux [R-FL]

Joseph Lieberman [I-CT]

Jefferson Sessions [R-AL]

John Thune [R-SD]

David Vitter [R-LA]

Roger Wicker [R-MS]

More, more, more. Did Obama really authorize INTERPOL to operate independently in the US, without regard for the bill of rights.


[1] First they came for the..... and when they finally came for me, there was no one to speak up.

Comments

[heron61.livejournal.com]

I'm not certain what there is to worry about with this bill. Certainly it's horrific, but it's also being supported by Lieberman, whose burned through a lot of his political capital, and by a bunch of far-right Republicans. One of them (James Inhofe) voted for the recent jobs bill, but the rest have pretty much voted against everything supported by the Democrats, and so this bill has zero chance of passing. It looks to me merely like one of those horrific bits of pointlessly evil grandstanding that the far right loves so much.

I agree that they should be widely denounced, but given that most of the people who vote for these monsters actually like this sort of vileness, I'm not certain how useful or important denouncing this sort of grandstanding actually is.