The amendment from Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) to block the president’s broad power to hold American citizens without trial was stripped from the final defense authorization bill in conference, prompting a “no” vote on the entire bill from Lee and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.).
Civil libertarian supporters in the upper chamber have stressed the urgency of passing the language for fear that more than actual terrorists could be detained by the government’s current authority.
The bill authorizing $633 billion in spending went to President Obama’s desk today after passing 81-14 in the Senate. The House approved the conference report 315-107 on Thursday.
Obama has vowed to veto the bill, but it passed with a veto-proof majority.
The Feinstein-Lee amenement had passed the Senate 67-29 on Nov. 29. The conference committee led by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) removed this provision, making an enemy of Paul, who called it a “travesty of justice.”
“These core American legal privileges prescribed in our Bill of Rights have been observed since our nation’s founding. When I assumed office, I took an oath to protect our Constitution – and in voting against this unconstitutional NDAA, I kept that promise,” Paul said.
“The right to due process, a trial by jury, and protection from indefinite detention should not be shorn from our Bill of Rights or wrested from the hands of Americans. It is a dark day in our history that these rights have been stomped upon and discarded,” he continued.
In a speech on the Senate floor, Paul called the exclusion of the provision “so fundamentally wrong and goes against everything we stand for as a country that it can’t go unnoticed and should be pointed out.”
“Now, some here may not care when they determine that they are going to detain Ahmed or Yusef or Ibrahim, but many innocents are named those names. Many Americans are named Saul or David or Isaac. Is our memory so short that we don’t understand the danger of allowing detention without trial? Is our memory so short that we don’t understand the havoc that bias and bigotry can do when unrestrained by law? Your trial by jury is your last defense against tyranny, your last defense against oppression. We have locked up Arabs, we have locked up Jews, we have locked up the Japanese. Do you not want to retain your right to trial by jury? Do you want to allow the whims of government to come forward and lock up who they please without being tried?” he said.
“Proponents of indefinite detention will argue that we are a good people and that we will never unjustly detain people. I don’t dispute their intentions or impute bad motives to them, but what I will say is remember what Madison said. Madison said that if a government were comprised of angels, we wouldn’t need the chains of the constitution.”
take our guns by whatever means necessary?
imprison w/o proper cause or method?
make mutiple (by e.o.) steps to magnify by exponential increase his powers to sieze this constitutional government, in time of civil disturbance or unrest?
surely a tyrant is afoot good people. even a blind man could see the deceit here.
there is a great fear in the land – fear that we must soon invoke remedies as prescribed by our learned forefathers. i personally still think it wiser to divorce than come to deadly, destructive blows.
this country deserves to be destroyed
800,000 abortions a year, gay marriage, arrest anybody the pres wants without reason
yeah
this country should die
Remember conservatives, Democrats think that Tea Party members are terrorists. And that isn’t hyperbole, either, they really think everyone is possibly the next Tim McVeigh.
So does John McCain.
I hope the President does veto it. I know it can be passed over the veto but make them pass it a second time. That the Republican House is making me depend on Obama to do the right thing is infuriating. Yes I am aware Obama will not likely veto this for the right reason and I frankly do not care.
Awright– tyranny, gun-grabbin’ and higher taxes!
2. joemack
this country deserves to be destroyed
800,000 abortions a year, gay marriage, arrest anybody the pres wants without reason
yeah
this country should die
And you too?
Be sure to check how your Rep/Sen votes and let them know your thoughts.
who is john galt?
I’m in favor of passing this defense bill and over-riding a veto, if it occurs. The bill to defend the rights of Americans from indefinite detention should be introduced and voted on by both houses of Congress, then sent to the President for signature and not by some cowardly means as tacking it on to an unrelated bill. Furthermore, I don’t understand how this came to require legislation in the first place. The right to a speedy trial, etc is guaranteed by the Bill of Rights. How is it that it nows needs legislation? Has the Supreme Court ruled that such detention by the President does not violate the Constitution?
I don’t know that O’s going to vetoing anything; wasn’t that language put back in the bill at the behest of the White House?
If I read background on this correctly Obama administration believes he already has this detention authority via the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) Act.
So regardless of the outcome of this legislation aren’t the concerns of civil libertarians still unaddressed ?