We Are No Longer a Nation Ruled By Laws
U.S. Supreme Court Decision … Means the Nation Has Entered a Post-Constitutional Era
by refusing to strike down the law and insist that any future laws explicitly exempt U.S. citizens, it leaves discretion in the hands of the executive branch.
The effect of the decision will be to allow the U.S. government to kidnap and indefinitely detain U.S. citizens who protest or dissent against the government … and the courts will never hear any legal challenge from the prisoners. The detainee will not get to say:
The courts said the indefinite detention law isn’t written to apply to U.S. citizens, so you have to let me go!
And he won’t get to say:
You’re confusing me with another John Smith, and I can prove it!
After all, prisoners can be held under the indefinite detention bill without trial, without being allowed to present evidence or hearing the evidence against them, without letting the citizen consult with a lawyer, and without even charging the citizen with any crime.
So – if you’re thrown into a hole somewhere – no one will even hear your story.
Liberty Upended
Chris Hedges noted in November:
If [the indefinite detention law] stands it will mean, as [the trial judge] pointed out in her 112-page opinion, that whole categories of Americans—and here you can assume dissidents and activists—will be subject to seizure by the military and indefinite and secret detention.
Constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead agrees:
No matter what the Obama administration may say to the contrary, actions speak louder than words, and history shows that the U.S. government is not averse to locking up its own citizens for its own purposes. What the NDAA does is open the door for the government to detain as a threat to national security anyone viewed as a troublemaker. According to government guidelines for identifying domestic extremists—a word used interchangeably with terrorists, that technically applies to anyone exercising their First Amendment rights in order to criticize the government.
As does constitutional attorney William Olson:
The personal freedoms of Americans are now in tatters following the refusal of the U.S. Supreme Court to hear an appeal to knock down the National Defense Authorization Act, constitutional and election law attorney William Olson says.
“This is a rather remarkable shredding of the Bill of Rights,”…. he explained that the language of the act is so “loose,” that anybody can be picked up for any reason.
“The president of the United States … [has] this power to detain indefinitely without charges, without trial, without an arrest warrant, without a grand jury, just to be able to hold someone who they think might be a threat of some sort,” Olson said.
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“How are you going to challenge it when the black SUV rolls away from your house and no one even knows where you’ve been taken?”