FUNDEMENTAL VALUES: spooks weaponize COINTELPRO claiming COUNTER TERROR PREROGATIVES?

http://www.truth-out.org/military-detention-vs-we-people/1322380800



Military Detention Versus We the People
Sunday 27 November 2011


by: Shahid Buttar, Truthout | News Analysis



Congress has a deserved reputation for cluelessness. .....


On Monday, the Senate will grapple with Congress’ latest bipartisan foolishness, the National Defense Authorization Act. Ironically opposed by both the White House and the Pentagon, it would expand preventive and arbitrary detention beyond Guantánamo Bay and the CIA’s shuttered black sites, importing it into the domestic United States.

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tommy:

Guess who is out of the fire....and into the frying pan...in all this?



Look what they (FBI-DOJ-NSA-CIA-INFRAGUARD-NEIGHBORHOOD WATCH GROUPS) did to me, and my known associates...without this new TORTURE IN MILITARY PRISON LAW. WHAT new SECRET TORTURE IS GONNA BE COMING TO MY LOATHSOME EXISTENCE....if this law is signed by a CIA PUPPET SPOOK named Barack Obama?

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The Senate Armed Services Committee, led by Senators Carl Levin (D-Michigan) and John McCain (R-Arizona), approved the bill despite its provisions for military detention of any suspect (even those apprehended within the United States) accused (not proven) of involvement in any terror-related offense. Presumably, military detention would include those accused of offenses as innocuous as "lying to a federal agent," unrelated to actual terrorism yet classified as terror-related.

The most glaring problem with the committee's legislation is its violation of our nation’s most fundamental values shared across our political spectrum.

First, the committee’s proposal accepts prosecutors as the arbiters of guilt. We have courts in America to check executive power. Impartial judges limit over whom the state may exercise its coercive power to deny freedom. We don’t trust prosecutors to make those decisions, because we presume innocence. Being considered "innocent until proven guilty" is a bedrock constitutional norm, a cornerstone in the edifice our Founders constructed to defend freedom from the potential tyranny that Levin & McCain casually invite.....


A separate fundamental principle restrains the military from operating domestically. Levin and McCain invite domestic military deployment.

Beyond its blatant violation of fundamental American principles, Levin and McCain also play loose with the system. Their bill passed the Armed Services Committee essentially in secret, without even a single hearing on their radical and seemingly Soviet-inspired proposal.

Moreover, their committee overstepped its jurisdiction, invading the spheres of the Judiciary and Intelligence Committees. Senators Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) and Dianne Feinstein (D-California), who chair those committees, raised their voices in protest--and Senator Mark Udall (D-Utah) introduced an amendment that would reverse Levin-McCain’s detention provisions. Even within a single, insular, tone deaf political party, the left and right hands actively work at cross purposes.
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We live in a nation where, apparently, we enjoy no electoral alternative to human rights abuses. Will the real Americans please stand up?...


Even worse than the betrayal of Democrats, however, is the betrayal of Congress--by itself. Our Founders dedicated the Constitution’s first Article to Congress, to reflect its primacy after our revolution against a unilateral monarchy. The central theme of the Constitution is its system of checks & balances to limit executive power and prevent tyranny.

But rather than resist executive power, today’s congressional leaders actively expand it. Over the past decade, Congress has granted presidents from both political parties every power they have sought: the power to eavesdrop en masse on every American household without individualized suspicion, the power to ignore the Nuremberg principle and torture with impunity, the power to initiate unilateral war, and more.

Levin-McCain is substantively, procedurally, and structurally even worse: It actively outflanks the executive, granting powers that neither the White House nor the Pentagon want, and have even pledged to resist.....




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