Senate moves to limit debate on unconstitutional legislation

by Paul Joseph Watson

The Senate has cleared the way for a final vote tomorrow on the National Defense Authorization Act, a provision of which would empower the U.S. military to operate on American soil, arrest American citizens and cart them off to detention centers anywhere in the world.

After the failure yesterday of an amendment that would have weakened Section 1031 of the NDAA bill, which would turn the entire “homeland” into a battlefield and allow the military to arrest individuals accused of being terrorists and detain them indefinitely without trial, the Senate voted 88-12 today to limit debate on the legislation, clearing it for passage tomorrow.

“A final vote on the bill could come as early as Thursday,” reports the Associated Press.

The provision was hashed out in secret by Senators Carl Levin and John McCain. Lindsay Graham, a supporter of the bill, explained that it would, “basically say in law for the first time that the homeland is part of the battlefield” and people can be imprisoned without charge or trial “American citizen or not.”

Republican Congressman Justin Amash called the provision of the bill, “one of the most anti-liberty pieces of legislation of our lifetime,” adding that the language had been “carefully crafted to mislead the public” in that the proposed law “does not preclude U.S. citizens from being detained indefinitely, without charge or trial, it simply makes such detention discretionary.”

Amash has been joined in his opposition to the bill by Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, who has introduced an amendment to strike Section 1031 from the legislation altogether. When Paul confronted McCain on the provision earlier this week, McCain confirmed that it would apply to American citizens accused of being terrorists.

Paul warned yesterday that the passage of the bill could see U.S. citizens arrested on American soil and sent to Guantanamo Bay.

Although the Obama administration has threatened to veto the bill, some observers believe Obama would rather avoid a political hot potato and sign it into law anyway.

“He has said he will. Whether he will is a difficult question because, politically, it’s difficult to veto a defense spending bill that 680 pages long and includes authorization to spend on a whole range of military programs,” Daphne Eviatar, Senior Associate, Human Rights First’s Law and Security Program, told Democracy Now.

 source: ‘Indefinite Detention’ Bill Set For Final Vote Thursday

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