Did the Bill of Rights Die Today?

[CuteOldGuy]

Excellent discussion of the NDAA and the hearing held on Friday. This really is the biggest issue facing our country today, and everyone in the MSM is ignoring it. Here's the article:

As I head west on Chambers Street toward the Court House I hear a huge roar followed by loud chanting ricocheting off the stonewalls of the buildings and I’m elated. This is amazing, I think. There must be hundreds of people protesting the NDAA outside 40 Centre Street. But then I realize the protest is the transit workers school bus strike now in its third week. I stop to take a few photos and give them a thumbs up before continuing along my route.

By the time I reach the Court House I’ve already missed Hedges, Ellsberg, Drake, Chomsky and the other notables who’ve already entered the Court House. What I find are 25 or so activists milling around and a huge group of photographers standing in a line on the opposite side of the sidewalk watching the proceedings along with several police cars and officers. So much for my dream of a large peoples presence to protest Obama signing the NDAA into law on December 31, 2011 as Americans sipped champagne and sang “Auld Lang Syne.” Perhaps Obama figured no one would notice and most people didn’t but Chris Hedges did and he filed a lawsuit against Obama and Panetta.

Whenever I mention the NDAA most people give me a quizzical look and ask, “What’s that?” To which I give them the ‘in a nutshell’ answer. The NDAA stands for the National Defense Authorization Act, which has provisions for the government to use the US military against US citizens and can throw US citizens into prison without due process until the end of hostilities, which in our case of permanent war means forever! They then look at me and ask, “Are you making this up?” To which reply, “Google it.” Let’s be honest who could make this up? Well, besides some member of the SS.

This is why plaintiffs and supporters in the Hedges v. Obama lawsuit are challenging the controversial indefinite detention provision set forth in Section 1021(b)(2) of the NDAA and were back in court on February 6th. The plaintiffs in the lawsuit, referred to as the Magnificent or Freedom 7, are: Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges, whistle-blower Daniel Ellsberg, NDAA Case Coordinator and founder of Revolution Truth Tangerine Bolen, author Noam Chomsky, Icelandic parliamentarian Birgitta Jonsdottir, Occupy London activist Kai Wargalla and journalist and activist Alexa O’Brien. Bruce Afran & Carl Mayer serve as counsel for the plaintiffs.

Back in May US District Judge Katherine Forrest ruled Section 1021 of the NDAA was unconstitutional. Her ruling returned us to the country we were before Obama signed this act into law. Meaning the government cannot strip a US citizen of due process or use the military to arrest US citizens and hold them in a military prison indefinitely. Judge Forrest then granted a permanent injunction on the NDAA provision, which was appealed the next day by the Obama White House. The 2nd Circuit Court of appeals then placed Section 1021 of the NDAA back into effect.

The only thing more craven then Obama signing the NDAA into law is the total lack of any coverage by the corporate media, which has proven itself to be nothing more than the propaganda arm of the corporate state. There were no cameras from NBC, ABC, CBS, FOX or CNN in front of the courthouse. The reporters were from Democracy Now!, RT, WBAI and various other independent media outlets. But worse still is the complete denial on the part of the American public that anything out of the ordinary is going on. The willful ignorance of American’s is astounding to me. We’ve become a nation of zombies.

Obama is a brand and I believe he was put into office to do what no Republican could ever get away with. He’s the kindler gentler face of corporate empire. Here we have a president who’s much worse than Bush in so many ways. Obama’s extended the wars, created new wars, extended the Bush tax cuts for the rich, given additional bail out money to the banks, allowed the health insurance industry to write the healthcare bill, extended the Patriot Act, escalated drone attacks (6 times more frequently than Bush) and prosecuted twice as many whistle-blowers under the Espionage Act of 1918 as all other presidents combined. Obama has assassinated three US citizens without due process and now wants to carry this draconian power out at home and to that end signed the NDAA into law and amazingly still finds time to ruminate over his ‘kill list’ on ‘Terror Tuesdays.’

Under his watch not one member of the Bush Administration has been held accountable for leading us into wars built on false evidence and lies; not one banker’s been held accountable for the fraud and corruption that brought down the global economy. Obama is every corporatist’s wet dream.

Is the American public willfully ignorant or just ignorant? Or as a friend of mine told me when we were arguing over Mr. O and his policies. “Well, I don’t want to know. I’m happy with my little life and if I know I’ll just be depressed.” Perhaps that’s the same logic the Germans used as Hitler came to power and began systematically stripping away civil liberties and silencing all descent and descanters. I used to wonder how the Germans could remain silent with all that transpired but now see it happening here in the US and I’m truly amazed and pissed off by our complicity in this corruption.

Glenn Ford refers to Obama as the “more effective evil” and I have to agree with his assessment. I mean give me a break. Don’t listen to what Obama says. Talk is cheap. Look at his actions. It’s not that difficult. Obama’s completely charmed and neutered the African American community. And the hypocritical liberals are so full of crap. They’re a bunch of crybabies who under Bush raised holy hell and now under Obama remain silent sycophants to his reign of terror. These so-called liberals are enabling cowards. Defending their murderer in chief at every turn. The liver lilied, hypocritical liberals lay prostate and impotent at Obama’s feet pleading to be stomped on. They beg for their enslavement. Jesus, are they truly that deaf, dumb and blind?

The corporate takeover of our government and the erosion of our civil liberties continue and if it’s allowed to continue unabated then we are truly done for. We will be a full-blown corporate police state with no rights and no jobs. We’ll be a penal colony. A third world country filled with serfs and warlords. Hedges affirms, “All these laws are being put through by design.”

The sooner Americans figure out there’s no two party system the better. There is only one party and that my friends is a corporate party that serves the 1% and the corporations. Our government has been taken over by corporate forces that have no loyalty to any nation but only to profit and they will exploit all humanity and the planet until collapse. Because like Chris Hedges says, “The only word they know is, “More!”

But here’s the rub we live on a finite planet with finite resources. As corporate forces continue to rape and pillage mother earth we’ll all be fighting for scraps. The so-called elites and the 1% believe their money will save them and for a time it probably will but rest assured when there’s no clean water or clean air and the planet’s completely radio active from all the nuclear spills and the oceans are polluted by the oil spills and only used as a dumping ground for plastic and chemical wastes no amount of money will save these greedy bastards. They’re going down just like the rest of us. The only difference is they’ll be shocked, as they believe their own hype.

But alas, we have to keep bearing witness to these atrocities even when nobody else does. It’s no time to get discouraged because my dream is one-day the 100th monkey will figure out what’s really going on and then we’ll all be washing our coconuts. Until then one must keep the faith, keep showing up, standing up and speaking truth to power.

On my way home I again pass by the transit workers and this time stop to listen to their grievances. They get it. The mayor with his 29 billion dollars is trying to break their union. I encourage them, “Don’t let them do it. Stay strong.”

Throughout history all totalitarian regimes have eventually turned on their own citizens. The violence always comes home to roost but like Gandhi said,“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you and then you win.”

http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/...y-jill-dalton/

[JD Barleycorn]

As far as I can tell Bush did try to stay within the parameters of the law though some will argue with that. Lincoln did the same thing. He twisted things a great deal trying to stay inside the Constitution. Afterwards, the SCOTUS said he was wrong about some things. Obama is not even making a pretense of obeying the law knowing that he will not be held accountable by either the press, the law (which he owns), or the Congress.

[CuteOldGuy]

President Bush didn't give a rat's ass about the Constitution. He was all about consolidating power, and protecting the oil and banking interests. He started what Obama is escalating. They both need to stand trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity. 9-11 happened, and Bush used it as an excuse to almost totally eliminate civil liberty. Obama is completing the task Bush started.

[Yssup Rider]

DANDELION SALAD... LMFAO!

Bye, Bye Miss American Pie,
Sought vagina in Salina but
The search cam up dry.
But a cute old guy was gargling
Jisum nearby singing
This will be the day that I die
I hope he doesn't come on my thigh...


LMFAO!

[Guest040616]

Originally Posted by Yssup Rider

Bye, Bye Miss American Pie,
Sought vagina in Salina but
The search cam up dry.
But a cute old guy was gargling
Jisum nearby singing
This will be the day that I die
I hope he doesn't come on my thigh...

Thank you, Don Mclean for sharing the XXX rated version with us.

[JD Barleycorn]

As I indicated some people will disagree. I noticed that when the left screamed about Bush's crimes that it usually came to down to a disagreement of politics and not an actual crime. We were attacked on 9/11 because of the tepid response of Clinton to Bin Laden's declaration of war against the west in the mid-90s. From what I've read and heard (yes, I was not there so I don't KNOW what happened) the turnover did not involve any stress on terrorism which we have had with us since the 1970s when Yassir Arafat organized scattered terrorism into an international movement. The response was quick (in Washington terms) and probably in a state of panic. As I have said previously, Joe Biden drafted what became the Patriot Act in 1995 and you really have to wonder what he was responding to then. Why would a liberal democrat put forward a bill during the time of Clinton?
Bush wanted, needed the power to deal with Al Queida because we found ourselves behind in the contest much the way that Eisenhower and Kennedy were behind the Soviet Union in the space race. We spent a lot of money (which we always had plenty of [sarcasm]), made some extreme laws, and put out a lot of rhetoric to try to demonstrate that Washington was not caught napping. Many of the abuses were created in Congress and not the White House. Take a look at the TSA. Bush wanted a flexible, professional security detail to protect air travel. He DID NOT want another goverment union. He thought that to get what he wanted he needed the power to hire and fire at will to eventually find the right people. Congress wanted another union, protected jobs, and no responsibiity. Their job was not to make air travel safe but to see to root out terrorism. So they saw terrorism where none existed. In the wheel chair of a 80 year old chemo patient, the doll of a 9 year old girl, and the super model with the hot bod who could be embarassed. The TSA is broke because of the other stuff that Bush didn't want.
Bush went to war with the permission of the Congress, twice. He did it by the rules. You may want to complain about an intelligence failure but every other intelligence service in the world also thought that Saddam had WMDs. Despite the lies of Joseph Wilson we do know that Saddam was buying yellow cake uranium in Africa. The only thing that Bush did wrong there was use poor judgement in selecting a partisan democrat (Wilson) to get the information. That was a major weakness of Bush, he reached across the aisle to advance things and the left screwed him over nearly everytime. See the aforementioned Patriot Act and No Child Left Behind. Bush did it by the rules whether you agree with what he did or not.
Bush did not try to personally destroy his opposition. He sacrificed Scooter Libby to the dark forces on the left because it is not him to go that route. If Bush had taken the war to the lying democrats, called Wilson and his wife for the liars and social climbers that they were, and defended his administration on TV Libby could have been saved from embarassment, prison, and financial ruin for his family. We know that Richard Armitage was the source of the leak and he worked for and was a friend of Colin Powell. Powell stabbed Bush in the back by protecting his friend (and his own ass) and allowed someone else to be blamed. Hardly the actions of an honorable man that is his reputation.

I could go on but I have to get to something.

[Yssup Rider]

Oh, so you're saying Bush was a Boy Scout?

That's refreshing. We haven't had a good Bush apologist post in a while.

Thanks for sharing.

Still waiting on that teaching certificate, btw.

[JD Barleycorn]

You will never see it. You are completely untrustworthy. You won't see my DD214 or my Social Security card either. So I guess I don't have them either.

I never said Bush was a boy scout, those are your words. I will say that Bush is a class act whether you disagree with him or not. He does not make it personal unlike Clinton (both of them) and Obama. There are places that he will not go and he will not snipe from the safety of the tall grass like Clinton and Carter have been doing.

[Guest123018-4]

To be intellectually honest you should admit that the attack on our Bill of Rights has been occurring since before the ink dried.

While an altruistic ideal that we as a nation of citizens would control the government and not allow the government to control us, we can look at history tos ee the examples. The most current attack and decimation isnt the first and it will not be the last as long as we allow the government the poser of perpetual laws. We are living under generations of laws that this generation had absolutely no say so. the idea that because a law was made by one generation it should apply to the next without that generations approval.
Sunset provisions for all laws to not exceed the term of 6 years, being the term of a senator, should be a requirement by constitutional ammendment. IN addition, each bill or act must stand on it's own with no ammendments or attachments. The approval process should be on each law and no blanket approval should be allowed.

Maybe there would be a requirement for everyone to have read the laws before voting on them followed by discussion prior to the vote. Absent or present votes shall be counted as a vote to repeal. No law can be adjusted or modified in this process and can only be continued or repealed. Tie vote causes repeal.

When the President feels that he has the right to kill American citizens in violation of our constitutional protects, the government has become out of control and needs to be stopped.

[nevergaveitathought]

can you imagine where'd we be without the bill of rights? that list demanded but seen as superfulous by some

in the course of human events (ok plagarism), you can never spell things out too completely.

[joe bloe]

[QUOTE=nevergaveitathought;1052 332386]can you imagine where'd we be without the bill of rights? that list demanded but seen as superfulous by some

in the course of human events (ok plagarism), you can never spell things out too completely.[/QUOTE]

It amazes me that the federal government has grown so large and does so many things the Constitution doesn't allow. The tenth amendment makes it absolutely clear that the intention of the founders was for the federal government be very limited in it's size and function.

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

If we want public housing, government schools, a government retirement plan or health care provided by the government, each state should decide individually. The federal government does not have the authority to do most of what it does.

There's an old saying, when all else fails, follow the directions. It's time we went back to the directions we were provided; what we've doing now isn't working.

[i'va biggen]

Kinda like Of the rich By the rich For the rich

[jbravo_123]

I think it was yesterday or the day before yesterday. Possibly on Wednesday.

[JD Barleycorn]

You're channeling Thomas Jefferson. He believed that all laws should subject to discussion and renewal every 20 years or one generation.
The Constitution has some flexibility built into it for a reason. Every president was considered to be a wartime executive who had to make quick, unilateral decisions with the consent of the Congress. The rest of the time the president was a national cheerleader. Most actions and laws were to be made by the Congress (which would only meet a few times a year). The Senate would represent the state's interests and the House would represent the people's interests. The Supreme Court would decide after the fact whether a law was within the framework of the Constitution. It has evolved that the Court waits until someone is inconvenienced by a law before they approach it. This allows a certain amount of time to pass for say a Lincoln to do what has to be done for the union before the Court will stop him. Wilson got his Sedition Act passed, monitored Americans, to some extent nationalized the telephone and telegraph system under a single entity, imprisoned a former presidential candidate, and violated the rights of many Americans. The Court, when it got the case, decided that there was a "clear and present danger" (World War I) that forced the infringement of certain rights. Following the war the same court repealed most of the law deciding that the danger had passed. I will give 2dogs this. The entire law was not repealed in 1921. Some of it held on so that Palmer commission and J. Edgar Hoover could deport thousands of Americans in the Red Scare that followed the war. Portions of the law were still in effect for Richard Nixon to use against agitators in the 1970s. Part of that law is now ensconced in the Patriot Act.

Freedom is not a once every four years responsibility, it is an everyday responsibility that every elected official and their appointees must be held to. Which requires us to understand the Constitution and the history of this country.

[Jackie S]

FDR pretty much ignored the Constitution and The Supreme Court when he instituted many of his New Deal policies. He figured they could argue it out in the future.

What was The SuprememCourt going to do. Make them tear Hoover Dam and most of the TVA down because FDR broke the rules.

President Lincoln had about the same attitude during the War. Win the damned thing and hash out the legalities later.

Like all presidents, President Obama will stretch the cords of limits to his power. Since he has a Senate that is too busy sucking his dick to complain, it is up to The House to bitch and scream enough to where he might take pause.

The Constitutional remedy is impeachment, but as I said, you can't complain when you have a mouth full of dick, especially when you are in love with the guy whose dick you are sucking.