{"id":489,"date":"2012-09-17T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2012-09-17T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.alexanderhiggins.com\/?p=489"},"modified":"2024-04-24T12:05:29","modified_gmt":"2024-04-24T12:05:29","slug":"white-house-demands-military-prisons-americans-ndaa-185841","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.alexanderhiggins.com\/society\/white-house-demands-military-prisons-americans-ndaa-185841\/","title":{"rendered":"White House demands military prisons for Americans under NDAA"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n
\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n

The White House has placed an appeal for an emergency stay to reverse last weeks ruling made banning the president\u2019s power to indefinitely detain Americans without charge.<\/h3>\n

See also \u2013 Obama: Detention OK for 1st Amendment \u2018activities\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n

RT<\/strong><\/a><\/cite> \u2013 The White House has asked the US Second Circuit Court of Appeals to place an emergency stay on a ruling made last week by a federal judge so that the president\u2019s power to indefinitely detain Americans without charge is reaffirmed immediately.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, September 12, US District Court Judge Katherine Forrest made permanent a temporary injunction she issued in May that bars the federal government from abiding by the indefinite detention provision in the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012, or NDAA. Judge Forrest ruled that a clause that gives the government the power to arrest US citizens suspected of maintaining alliances with terrorists and hold them without due process violated the Constitution and that the White House would be stripped of that ability immediately.<\/p>\n

Only hours after Judge Forrest issued last week\u2019s ruling, the Obama administration threatened to appeal the decision, and on Monday morning they followed through.<\/p>\n

At around 9 a.m. Monday, September 17, the White House filed an emergency stay in federal appeals court in an effort to have the Second Circuit strip away Judge Forrest\u2019s ruling from the week earlier.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlmost immediately after Judge Forrest ruled, the Obama administration challenged the decision,\u201d<\/em> writes Chris Hedges, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist that is listed as the lead plaintiff in the case. According to Hedges, the government called Judge Forrest\u2019s most recent ruling an \u201cextraordinary injunction of worldwide scope,\u201d<\/em> and Executive Branch attorneys worked into the weekend to find a way to file their stay.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Justice Department sent a letter to Forrest and the Second Circuit late Friday night informing them that at 9 a.m. Monday the Obama administration would ask the Second Circuit for an emergency stay that would lift Forrest\u2019s injunction,\u201d<\/em> Hedges writes. \u201cThis would allow Obama to continue to operate with indefinite detention authority until a formal appeal was heard. The government\u2019s decision has triggered a constitutional showdown between the president and the judiciary.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Attorney Carl Mayer, a counsel for Hedges and his co-plaintiffs, confirmed to RT early Monday that the stay was in fact filed with the Second Circuit.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis may be the most significant constitutional standoff since the Pentagon Papers case,\u201d<\/em> Carl Mayer says in a separate statement posted on Mr. Hedge\u2019s blog.<\/p>\n

Bruce Afran, who serves as co-lead counsel along with Mayer, tells Hedges that the White House could be waging a war against the injunction to ensure that the Obama administration has ample time to turn the NDAA against any protesters participating in domestic demonstrations.<\/p>\n

\u201cA Department of Homeland Security bulletin was issued Friday claiming that the ri<\/em>ots [in the Middle East] are likely to come to the US and saying that DHS is looking for the Islamic leaders of these likely riots,\u201d<\/em> Afran tells Hedges. \u201cIt is my view that this is why the government wants to reopen the NDAA \u2014 so it has a tool to round up would-be Islamic protesters before they can launch any protest, violent or otherwise. Right now there are no legal tools to arrest would-be protesters. The NDAA would give the government such power. Since the request to vacate the injunction only comes about on the day of the riots, and following the DHS bulletin, it seems to me that the two are connected. The government wants to reopen the NDAA injunction so that they can use it to block protests.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Hedges, who has previously reported for papers including the New York Times and the Christian Science Monitor, argued that his job as a journalist requires him to routinely interact and converse with persons that may be considered terrorists in the eyes of the US government.<\/p>\n

Under the NDAA, Americans \u201cwho was part of or substantially supported al-Qaeda, the Taliban or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners\u201d<\/em> can be held in prison cells \u201cuntil the end of hostilities,\u201d<\/em> vague verbiage that essentially allows for those suspect of such associations to be decided under the discretion of US President Barack Obama or any federal agent underneath him.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause the language is so vague in this law,\u201d<\/em> Mr. Mayer explains to RT, \u201cif any journalist or activist is seen as reporting or offering opinions about groups that could somehow be linked not just to al-Qaeda but to any opponent of the United States or even opponents of our allies\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cI spent many years in countries where the military had the power to arrest and detain citizens without charge,\u201d<\/em> Hedges wrote when he first filed his suit in January. \u201cI have been in some of these jails. I have friends and colleagues who have \u2018disappeared\u2019 into military gulags. I know the consequences of granting sweeping and unrestricted policing power to the armed forces of any nation. And while my battle may be quixotic, it is one that has to be fought if we are to have any hope of pulling this country back from corporate fascism.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Monday morning, Hedges once more responded to the White House\u2019s relentless attempts to reauthorize powers granted under the NDAA, asking, \u201cIf the administration is this anxious to restore this section of the NDAA, is it because the Obama government has already used it? Or does it have plans to use the section in the immediate future?\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThe decision to vigorously fight Forrest\u2019s ruling is a further example of the Obama White House\u2019s steady and relentless assault against civil liberties, an assault that is more severe than that carried out by George W. Bush,\u201d<\/em> writes Hedges. \u201cObama has refused to restore habeas corpus. He supports the FISA Amendment Act, which retroactively makes legal what under our Constitution has traditionally been illegal \u2014 warrantless wire tapping, eavesdropping and monitoring directed against US citizens. He has used the Espionage Act six times against whistle-blowers who have exposed government crimes, including war crimes, to the public. He interprets the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force Act as giving him the authority to assassinate US citizens, as he did the cleric Anwar al-Awlaki. And now he wants the right to use the armed forces to throw U.S. citizens into military prisons, where they will have no right to a trial and no defined length of detention.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

In his latest blog post, Hedges acknowledges, \u201cThe government has now lost four times in a litigation that has gone on almost nine months.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Stay up to date with the latest news:<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The White House has placed an appeal for an emergency stay to reverse last weeks ruling made banning the president\u2019s power to indefinitely detain Americans without charge. See also \u2013 Obama: Detention OK for 1st Amendment \u2018activities\u2019 RT \u2013 The White House has asked the US Second Circuit Court of Appeals to place an emergency … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.alexanderhiggins.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/489"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.alexanderhiggins.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.alexanderhiggins.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.alexanderhiggins.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.alexanderhiggins.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=489"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blog.alexanderhiggins.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/489\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1241,"href":"https:\/\/blog.alexanderhiggins.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/489\/revisions\/1241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.alexanderhiggins.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.alexanderhiggins.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.alexanderhiggins.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}