Feinstein amendment doubles down on NDAA’s assault on constitutional rights
While US government lawyers persist in defending the menacing Section 1021 in court, a Senate initiative makes matters worse
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/05/feinstein-amendment-ndaa-assault-constitutional-rights
In what now has become standard for our government, laws are proposed with names that imply the exact opposite of what is actually in the legislation. Instead of calling a law ‘Indefinite Military Detention for US Citizens Policy’, which is exactly what the NDAA is, they obscure it in words that appear to show the opposite. So well hidden is this effort, it seems, that even journalists (though so many are already in the back pocket of our government that this probably shouldn’t be a surprise) misunderstand the intent. Since we are talking about crystal clear violations of our Constitution, rational people can only come to one conclusion: that our government is diligently stripping away our rights in such a way that the population doesn’t even realize it. Indeed, due to the deliberate smoke screen, the population, when it is made aware of it, cheers it on.
I would say this is how tyranny starts, but we have already been living this way for a while. Democracy has been a sham in our country for a long while, perhaps its entire existence, but based on my recollections of history, this seems like the first sustained assault to strip away the protections we are at least afforded on paper. The Constitution is already a rather ragged document full of rents and holes, but with the efforts described above, we won’t be left with enough to blow our nose shortly.
