Defense Bill "Fix" Not Good Enough

A few days ago I wrote a post about a terrible provision that was put into the Defense bill currently being considered by Congress. That provision would allow the government to keep a person in a military prison indefinitely without charges or a trial, as long as they declared the person to be a "terrorist" -- and the provision would even apply to United States citizens. This provision could be used to keep anyone in prison, since the government wouldn't have to prove their "terrorist" designation was true (as they would have to do with a trial).

The president said he would veto the bill, and many on the left (including me) thought he was defending the constitution and rule of law. We were wrong -- he was only protecting his own power. The president has now removed his threat of a veto because he says the Congress has "fixed" the bill's problem. But Congress did not fix the problem. What they did was put in a provision that says the president can, if he wants to, move a prisoner from military custody to civilian custody on a case by case basis.

The horrible truth is that the bill still allows the government to detain anyone they want in a military prison indefinitely without charges or a trial. All they have to do is hang the terrorist label on that person.If this becomes law, and now it almost certainly will, what will be the difference between us and any other of the world's police states (where people are imprisoned just because they disagree with the government)? There will be no difference at all, because labeling a person as a "terrorist" is just too easy when it doesn't have to be proven in a court of law.

It seems we have come full circle in America. Wasn't one of the grievances with England before the Revolutionary War the fact that they could arrest and imprison Americans with charges or a trial? Now our own government is doing the same thing. It seems that all the government has to do to violate the Constitution and get away with it is to use the word "terrorist". That's nothing less than a trashing of our Constitution and our sacred rule of law.

Welcome to tyranny!