Posted on 05/21/2009 8:05:48 AM PDT by markomalley
WASHINGTON — President Obama told human rights advocates at the White House on Wednesday that he was mulling the need for a “preventive detention” system that would establish a legal basis for the United States to incarcerate terrorism suspects who are deemed a threat to national security but cannot be tried, two participants in the private session said.
The discussion, in a 90-minute meeting in the Cabinet Room that included Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. and other top administration officials, came on the eve of a much-anticipated speech Mr. Obama is to give Thursday on a number of thorny national security matters, including his promise to close the detention center at the naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
Human rights advocates are growing deeply uneasy with Mr. Obama’s stance on these issues, especially his recent move to block the release of photographs showing abuse of detainees, and his announcement that he is willing to try terrorism suspects in military commissions — a concept he criticized bitterly as a presidential candidate.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
We better be very careful and fight tooth and nail to ensure that this type of thing in any form cannot be used against U.S. citizens. Remember the list of potential terrorists that came out of DHS not too long ago. We don’t want people to be detained without trial for being military Veterans, pro-life, supporting the 2nd Amendment, and supporting many other conservative ideals.
If we fail to protect ourselves now through the law, we will either be marching off to detention camps, or fighting for our lives, or both in the future.
? Wrong person to reply to?
“The only justification for holding a person without trial is in a battlefield situation”
That’s easy, just declare a rebellious county a “battlefield”, and you can “preventively Detain” anyone you want to.
Read the first paragraph of the article closely:
President Obama told human rights advocates at the White House on Wednesday that he was mulling the need for a “preventive detention” system that would establish a legal basis for the United States to incarcerate terrorism suspects who are deemed a threat to national security but cannot be tried, two participants in the private session said.
If the enabling act that permits him to do this is written as the journalist reports it in that paragraph, it does not state that this law would provide for preventive detention for enemy combatants captured overseas. Read it again: that would establish a legal basis for the United States to incarcerate terrorism suspects who are deemed a threat to national security but cannot be tried. That is a WHOLE lot more generic.
Who are terrorism suspects? According to DHS, both you and I, for the cause of posting on this site, are considered rightwing extremists (and thus could be classified as potential terrorists). There are those who make a little more radical comments on this site who could, using the definitions supplied by DHS, be considered to be threatening terrorism. (Motivation) If those same people could potentially be shown to have the capability (i.e., knowledge, supplies), then you have the two elements required to establish suspicion. You know what you need for capability? You don't need guns. You don't even need knives or spears. All you need is to be a property owner and have the normal yard care supplies on your property (a molotov cocktail can be made with gasoline; a bomb can be made out of fertilizer).
Am I paranoid? Sure. But just because a person is paranoid doesn't mean that they're not out to get him!
The difference between GITMO and this is that those who were imprisoned at GITMO were captured overseas and were kept overseas. Therefore, they never had constitutional rights. They were held in the status in which they were held due to the fact that the laws of armed conflict don't cover the particular situation; so they could just be shot as spies / saboteurs (my preferred solution, but they don't listen to me all the time), or given a structured process whereby their status could be determined and dealt with judicially -- all without them ever touching US soil.
This, on the other hand, as written above, would apply to anybody suspected by the administration...but whom the administration could not try. Who could the administration not try? (1) those individuals who would gain access to highly sensitive information as a result of a trial process, (2) those individuals who did not commit a crime triable in the US, (3) those individuals whose rights were not adequately protected during the arrest / pre-trial imprisonment processes, and (4) those individuals where there is insufficient evidence to convict in a court.
I'm glad you apparently trust the motives of the administration and the Congress (as well as trusting the Court's judgment), but I don't.
I'm not fond of that phrase, either, but I didn't want to change the original.
The Rules are just a cut-and-paste of the first three rules from the article linked below:
http://transsylvaniaphoenix.blogspot.com/2009/02/what-i-have-learned-from-twentieth.html
Amen
The post-partisan America in several decades: driving a POS electric government car at 10 mph, getting stopped by ACORN DHS union thugs every 2 miles to have one's papers, phone cards, waistlines, and drink holders examined, driving to AmeriBank (the only bank in the country, operated by the federal reserve) to deposit skin, hair, and urine specimens (Patriot Act III qualifications to detect evidence of gunpowder exposure, tobacco use, non-diet Pepsi consumption, meat consumption, super-quota diet supplementation, and unlicensed reproductive acts) and withdraw meal credits so as to use at the local UN food dispensary to pick up a monthly allotment of government tofu-cheese and People's Gruel before being shipped off to either Iraq (Overseas Contingency Operation Enduring Pacification, year 46), Sudan (Overseas Contingency Operation Soaringly Enduring Democracy, year 19), or Somalia (Overseas Contingency Operation Enduring Restoration of Hope and Change, year 4) to put on a blue helmet and hold a shovel while being shot at by Kalashnikov-wielding neolithic recipients of (apparently insufficient) US welfare payments - or, if "national service" is refused, before being subjected to government propaganda for 20 hours a day at a level III FEMA reeducation camp until either social conversion is deemed to be achieved or until you are found to be a genetic match and thus involuntary organ donor to the requisite number of protected-class individuals (possibly as low as one, depending upon how many protected groups the individual is a member of) as to justify your demise for their survival (the common good).
No paragraph break needed above - that is all one sentence.
That's very good. I give you permission to use my [/cynic] tag. ;)
>Disagree. In the case of sex offenders, there is a real mental health issue involved. Permanent incarceration is legit for them.
I disagree with your disagreement. If they are unable to repay their debt to society (serve their sentence & be released back into society) the only conscionable option is to execute them; for indefinite imprisonment is keeping open the risks that they will escape into society or harm those that guard the prisoners, and at the expense of the law abiding members of society to boot.
I hope that's sending a message.
What I would really like to see is another 20 to 30 million NRA members.
Of course, it is. Absolutely necessary. But their circumstance -- illegal combatants, non-citizens, captured on the battlefield -- doesn't give them access of habeas corpus.
So, "preventive detention" isn't being aimed at them. Instead, it's being aimed at American citizens who a.) might be terrorists or b.) might otherwise dissent from administration policies. And I rather doubt we're talking about ELF or ALF, e.g.
We are all watching the decline and fall of the United States of American and the Constitution/Bill of Rights - we all had better act against these power grabs or this will be Nazi Germany Part II.
Well said.
>What I would really like to see is another 20 to 30 million NRA members.
I am apathetic/ambivalent on that issue: it would be good to have the NRA better funded to defend more 2nd Amendment cases, but it is also desirable that as many of the new gun owners have as little documentation as possible on them as owning guns.
Do you see why?
Unfortunately for your position, the mental health precedent is already in existence for other mental illnesses. The insane desire to rape a young boy (or girl) has never been held on the same level as deliberate premeditated murder. A legitimate insanity defense, AFAIK, has always been a sufficient argument to avoid the death penalty.
When I read “preventive detention” this first thing I thought of was the movie “Minority Report”. I think that’s the name of it.
>The insane desire to rape a young boy (or girl) has never been held on the same level as deliberate premeditated murder.
And yet rape is a capitally punishable crime, even here in the US. (UCMJ)
>A legitimate insanity defense, AFAIK, has always been a sufficient argument to avoid the death penalty.
The key there is _legitimate_. What is it that qualifies it so? Surely not the mere DESIRE to have sex with the young; there are people with homosexual desires who do not do homosexual acts. (Or would you call them insane?)
Not only that, but kidnapping IS also a capitally punishable offense (in some states). But, there are more than just those that rape children, what about those that rape adults? I have put no qualifiers on any of my opinions other than that I believe that rape should be a death-penalty offense on even the first charge; much like murder.
oopsies: Valkyrie
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