A Dying Day of Dignity for American Liberty: Congress stoops low to give President Power to declare Martial Law

Tuesday marked another day in dying dignity for Americans.  The Senate, everything short of wisdom and sanity voted nearly unanimously for the Defense Authorization bill.  Known primarily as a fiscal bill—a bill to allocate funds for the next couple years for defense measures, it also modified the procedures for handling terrorism. 

Confusion abounds about the intent of the bill: Does it rob liberty and due process from American Citizens or does it not? The answer is actually both.  Well, sort of.  The truth is that the bill does indeed take Constitutional rights from Americans.  Robs them blind, actually. But the wording of the act cleverly disguises this stripping.

In Sections 1032 to 1037, which defines the requirements of military custody—that would be another name for martial law—one paragraph states that a future paragraph is exempt; they call it “waived” from the exempted status it seeks to list.  What is that paragraph?  The one that says Americans are exempt from martial law. You are reading correctly:  The latter paragraph is an exemption, along with another one exempting lawful resident aliens, from detainment of custody by military, but the waiver that comes before it reverses that exemption in any situation the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of State says warrants it.  This is suspect, particularly because the “lawful resident aliens’” rights remain in tack—escaping the waiver of the exemption—meaning their exempted status against detention and so forth, remains, even when American status does not.  This is just insultingly bad math to Americans who have been betrayed wholesale by the very people in whom they put their complete trust for their liberties.  

To make matters worse, the Senate and House are attempting to reconcile their differences between each house’s versions of the latest Defense Authorization bill.  Given that the House version has none of the liberty robbing clauses in it, that fact that they are working with the Senate on a compromise indicates a willingness to give up some of American’s inalienable and constitutionally enumerated rights for the sake of this compromise.  A compromise on liberties is in violation of the Constitution that both houses are sworn to protect. Giving any part of any of them away is tantamount to a breach of our Contract with them in that document.  Clearly the Federal government has an obligation to protect the states from insurrection and invasion and to preserve liberty in this country.  Any measure, however, that takes one from the other is not well thought out policy.  This nation has and always will be the land to covet.  Absolute security is not reasonable, nor expected.   A police state, which in theory is the only way to preserve absolute safety—at least from all other threats besides the government itself—is wholly against the intent of the Constitution, Colonial America, and the vast understanding of the Founders on the principles of freedom.

Unfortunately, the two Houses of Congress met to work out a compromise on their differences. Note, first, however, that the House version contained no such insults to liberty. Their version on the bill was strictly an allocation of funds. So, exactly what compromise were they intending? A compromise of liberty? Indeed. Today, the House passed a "compromise" version of the Defense Authorization bill. And what was the compromise? The House of Representatives added the precise text in question, including the so-called "waiver" of the "exclusion". The one difference is that the call of national security no longer is decreed by the Secretary of Defense in consultation with the Secretary of State, which was bad enough. This bill, however goes one step further into the twilight zone of American Horror: This bill gives the president--that would be paranoid Obama--the power to declare such a national security threat to call up Martial law. This power goes to the same man who in November 2011, said it is necessary to provide indefinite detention of people suspected of planning a crime.

To make matters even worse, the Library of Congress is now keeping a complete record, going back to Twitter’s inception, of all tweets.  That is right; Twitter is now under the auspices of the Library of Congress.  This would be a ridiculous, nearly laughable sight to the Founders of this nation, were they not pained by the sharp barbs from constant rolling over in their graves from such a gross departure from the Constitution on a daily basis; and here, of the purpose of the Library of Congress.  To wit: the Library of Congress’s purpose is in support of one of the enumerated duties of the Federal government, to protect the property rights of those who produce and invent: trademarks, patents, and copyrights. The catalogue system we have is derived from and then stored in the Library of Congress.  Never was there a thought or purpose to cataloguing comments or statements publicly posted on a private site.  The LOC is celebrating their intentions by claiming that they will be seeking the most informational and beneficial comments.  To what end? 

One can only wonder.  But then, too much wondering could be construed by this Administration as spying, and we know from Sections 1032 to 1037 of S1867 where that will land us.

[Another form of this article first appeard in USDailyReview.com on Dec. 13, 2011]