62 JANUARY 25, 2014 | TEAPARTY.ORG EXCLUSIVE Congress grants Obama ‘free rein for martial law’ SPOTLIGHT (Tea Party) – Several of the nation’s most respected legal teams are taking their case to the Supreme Court, asking the highest court in the land to take up the challenge to provisions in the National Defense Authorization act. The legal teams are challenging the indefinite detention provisions of the Act claiming the document created a framework for a police state. Among those challenging the law is journalist Chris Hedges who asserts that as the law is written it could be used to target those in the media reporting on issues that are terrorist related. FAX BLAST SPECIAL: Impeach Obama NOW! A friend-of-the-court brief was submitted in the case to the Supreme Court by attorneys with the U.S. Justice Foundation of Ramona, Calif., Friedman Harfenist Kraut & Perlstein of Lake Success, N.Y., and William J. Olson, P.C. of Vienna, Va. It states: “The central question now before this court is whether the federal judiciary will stand idly by while Congress and the president establish the legal framework for the establishment of a police state and the subjugation of the American citizenry through the threat of indefinite military arrest and detention, without the right to counsel, the right to confront one’s accusers, or the right to trial.” Michael Connelly, Steven J. Harfenist, William J. Olson, Herbert W. Titus, John S. Miles, Jeremiah L. Morgan and Robert J. Olson are the attorneys who are adding their voices, asking the Supreme Court to overturn the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. In an abrupt move, the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals said the plaintiffs didn’t have standing to challenge the law adopted by Congress. The brief is on behalf of U.S. Rep. Steve Stockman, Virginia Delegate Bob Marshall, Virginia Sen. Dick Black, the U.S. Justice Foundation, Gun Owners Foundation, Gun Owners of America, Center for Media & Democracy, Downsize DC Foundation, Downsize DC.org, Free Speech Defense & Education Fund, Free Speech Coalition, Western Journalism Center, The Lincoln Institute, Institute on the Constitution, Abraham Lincoln Foundation and Conservative Legal Defense & Education Fund. According to critics of the NDAA bill, America officially became a police state of December 29, 2013. There was no time for discussion or amendments as the bill was fast-tracked through the Senate during the time when most Americans were glued to the scandal surrounding “Duck Dynasty star, Phil Robertson. Out of 100 senators, a stunning 85 voted to renew Obama’s march toward Martial Law, giving him the power to seize US citizens, deny them due process and hold them as long as he wants in military facilities. The Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist Hedges, along with others, had previously filed a lawsuit against the Obama administration. In that lawsuit they were challenging the legality of an earlier version of the NDAA. More specifically, the section that drew the lawsuit by Hedges was Section 1021 if the 2012 NDAA. Hedges was formerly a foreign correspondent for the New York Times. In 2002, he was one of a team of journalists awarded a Pulitzer Prize for the paper’s coverage of global terrorism. Also joining Hedges in the suit was Daniel Ellsberg, Jennifer Bolen, Noam Chomsky, Alex O’Brien, Kai Warg All, Brigitta Jonsottir and the group U.S. Day of Rage. Many of these people are authors or reporters who claim the threat of indefinite detention by the US military has already had an impact, causing them to alter their activities. Hedges said: “It’s clearly unconstitutional.” “It is a huge and egregious assault against our democracy. It overturns over 200 years of law, which has kept the military out of domestic policing.” According to the amicus brief, the precedent “leaves American citizens vulnerable to arrest and detention, without the protection of the Bill of Rights, under either the plaintiff’s or the government’s theory of the case. “The judiciary must not await subsequent litigation to resolve this issue, as the nature of military detention is that American citizens then would have no adequate legal remedy,” explains the brief. Section 1021 allows the detention of anyone by the military, even if that person is an American citizen, should the president believe that person was involved with terrorism. This is different from the Authorization of Military Force which was adopted following the terror attacks on 9/11. The Authorization of Military Force allows detention but it requires that there must be something linking the person(s) to the 9/11 attacks. “Section 1021 authorizes detention, potentially forever, and even rendition of American citizens to foreign nations,” points out the brief. “If this court refuses to hear the Hedges challenge, it will leave American citizens subject to unconstitutional military arrest and detention. “If this court does not grant the petition, there is no reason to believe the U.S. presidents would cease to assert ‘the right to place certain individuals [including American citizens] in military detention, without trial.’ There would continue to be no statutory constraint on an arrest being authorized by a military officer of unspecified rank. There would be no protection provided by the requirement of a grand jury indictment. There would be no requirement of an arrest warrant issued by an Article II judge supported by a sworn affidavit showing probable cause of the commission of a specific crime. Neither would there be any protection against use of compelled testimony, or against an violation of due process of law. There would be no civilian proceedings whatsoever against the person detained. Indeed, there is no requirement that the individual being detained has committed any federal crime, and military detentions could be used to circumvent the protections afforded American citizens by the treason clause of the U.S. Constitution.” It describes a scenario that is frightening: “After the string of black Suburbans pulls away, it is difficult to believe that the military would provide relatives or lawyers with any information whatsoever as to where the person being detained was being held.” Furthermore, it explains that Congress specifically desired for the detention provision to apply to American citizens even if they were on American soil. They rejected multiple amendments that would have exempted them. Even Obama stated: I want to clarify that my administration will not authorize the indefinite military detention without trial of American citizens … My administration will interpret Section 1021 in a manner that ensures that any detention it authorizes complies with the Constitution, the laws of war, and all other applicable law.” This means it could be interpreted to the contrary. U.S. District Judge Katherine B. Forrest issued a Memorandum Opinion and Order on it at the trial court level. In it, she struck the provision as unconstitutional. Still, a number of states have passed laws banning enforcement in those states. Constitutional expert Herb Titus said that Judge Forrest’s ruling underscored “the arrogance of the current regime, in that they will not answer questions that they ought to answer to a judge because they don’t think they have to.” As the judge explained, that the plaintiffs alleged paragraph 1021 is “constitutionally infirm, violating both their free speech and associational rights guaranteed by the 1st Amendment as well due process rights guaranteed by the 5th Amendment.” Judge Forrester clearly noted that the government “did not call any witnesses, submit any documentary evidence or file any declarations.” Furthermore she wrote: “It must be said that it would have been a rather simple matter for the government to have stated that as to these plaintiffs and the conduct as to which they would testify, that [paragraph] 1021 did not and would not apply, if indeed it did or would not.” The response from the administration? “I’m not authorized to make specific representations regarding specific people.” “The court’s attempt to avoid having to deal with the constitutional aspects of the challenge was by providing the government with prompt notice in the form of declarations and depositions of the … conduct in which plaintiffs are involved and which they claim places them in fear of military detention,” she wrote. “To put it bluntly, to eliminate these plaintiffs’ standing simply by representing that their conduct does not fall within the scope of 1021 would have been simple. The government chose not to do so – thereby ensuring standing and requiring this court to reach the merits of the instant motion. “Plaintiffs have stated a more than plausible claim that the statute inappropriately encroaches on their rights under the 1st Amendment,” the judge wrote. The concern expressed by experts is that a journalist who has interviewed a member of a terrorist group could be considered as having given aid to that group. The government appealed the trial judge’s ruling to the 2nd Circuit, which ruled rather abruptly that the plaintiffs do not have a right to challenge the law.
Posted on: Sun, 26 Jan 2014 00:52:02 +0000
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