Behind Closed Doors: Congress Trying to Force Indefinite Detention Bill on Americans 7DEZ11

INDEFINITE DETENTION (opposed by all the heads of the federal law enforcement, intelligence and military departments and agencies), without charge and trial, a tactic used by every repressive, undemocratic, totalitarian regime in the world, is now a very real threat to everyone in America and to Americans no matter where they are. All it will take is for someone in power to not like what you are doing for you to be accused of terrorism or supporting terrorism and our government will be able to arrest you and turn you over to the military to be imprisoned. No civil rights, no human rights. The government will be able to imprison you for as long as they want. If this bill is passed how will we be any different than the prc, Russia, Cuba, Vietnam, any of our Persian Gulf allies, any of the brutal dictatorships anywhere else in the world? Our Constitution will have lost all relevance, the Bill of Rights will be meaningless. This one piece of legislation is more of a threat to our Republic than hitler or communism was, more of a threat than terrorism ever will be. This is not a slippery slope that will erode our civil liberties, it will drag the nation over a cliff, destroying our Bill of Rights; no habeas corpus, no speedy trial, no Miranda Rights, no ban on cruel and unusual punishment. Sens carl levin D MI and john mccain r AZ and rep buck mckeon r CA are the architects of this assault on our freedom and civil liberties and human rights and they with their spineless colleagues are waging a vicious propaganda war of fear, ignorance and prejudice to sway the American people to support them. They are using the same tactics hitler and his nazi party used on the German people during an economic crisis in the 1930's to destroy their republic and unleash a reign of terror on the German people that lasted until the end of WW II. We must not let that happen to us. Click the link below to contact Congress and tell your Senators and Representative to vote against this bill, and then if it is passed tell President Obama he must veto it for the sake of the nation. This from the ACLU......

Maybe you spent the last weekend shopping for gifts, writing out holiday cards or studying for final exams. For most of America, the end of the year is a busy time. In Congress, this is a season usually spent trying to jam through bad bills while they hope no one is looking.
The Senate voted last Thursday to pass S. 1867, the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which would authorize the president to send the military literally anywhere in the world to imprison civilians without charge or trial. Prison based on suspicion alone. The power is so sweeping that the president would be able to direct the military to use its powers within the United States itself, and even lock up American citizens without charge or trial.
No corner of the world, not even your own home, would be off-limits to the military. And there is no exception for American citizens. Section 1031 — one of the indefinite detention provisions — of the Senate-approved version of the NDAA has no limitations whatsoever based on geography, duration or citizenship. And the entire Senate bill was drafted in secret, with no hearing, and with committee votes behind closed doors.
I'm not sure which was more surprising — that the majority of senators ignored the pleas of countless constituents, or that they also ignored every top national security official opposed to the provisions. Opposition to the detention provisions came from Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, CIA Director David Petraeus, FBI Director Robert Mueller, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, White House Advisor for Counterterrorism John Brennan, and DOJ National Security Division head Lisa Monaco. The Senate ignored them all.
Back in May, the House of Representatives passed its own version of the NDAA, which had a provision authorizing worldwide war wherever any terrorism suspect resides, even if there is no threat to America or Americans. Buried in the bill is a sentence that lets the president order the military to lock up without charge or trial American citizens and anyone else he decides is a suspect, even if the person is right here in America or in such friendly countries as Canada, Great Britain, or France.
Now, the two bills are in conference committee. The chairmen and ranking members of the Armed Services Committee — known as "the Big Four" — have been having one secret meeting after another over the past few days to quickly write a final bill. Who are the Big Four? From the Senate, it is Sens. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) who were the very two who had secretly written the Senate indefinite detention provisions. The third member is the House Armed Services Committee Chairman Buck McKeon (R-Calif.), who is the person who wrote the House indefinite detention provisions without so much as a hearing. And the fourth member is the House Armed Services Committee Ranking Member Adam Smith (D-Wash.), who courageously fought the indefinite detention provisions on the House floor.
That's 3-1 for indefinite military imprisonment without charge or trial. There's good reason to worry about what the Big Four do in their secret meetings.
What happens next? First, there will be a more formal House-Senate conference in the next few days to put an official stamp of approval on what the Big Four wrote in secret. And then the bills will be on the floors of the House and Senate by early next week.
Their plan is to move very, very fast. Congress certainly has earned a reputation for being slow, but the plan for the NDAA is to jam it through the House and Senate with as little debate as possible. But you can help stop them.
Amazingly, as soon as a week from today, a final bill could be passed by Congress and headed to President Obama's desk. His White House has repeatedly threatened to veto the NDAA if these dangerous provisions stay in the bill.
But should it really come to that? Congress itself should come to its senses and ditch the indefinite detention provisions. And just as importantly, Congress should listen to you and every other American on what we all as Americans want for our country. Secret deals for indefinite military detention without charge or trial? Tell Congress we are better than that. It's not who we are as Americans, and it is not the country or the world we want to pass on to our children and grandchildren.
Now is the time to act and contact your senators and House member. Tell them vote "NO" on the NDAA if it includes indefinite detention without charge or trial.

The Pentagon Budget's Stealth Earmarks from MOJO 6JUN11

I can't even claim surprise or amazement at this hypocrisy, it is just another example of the twisted depravity practiced in congress, and yet people time after time send the same liars and cheats back to congress only to have them continue lying and cheating the taxpayers out of an honest and transparent budget process......WHEN will we ever learn???? This from MOJO....

How House Republicans hope to fund their pet Pentagon projects while dodging their party's ban on earmarks.

Rep. Buck McKeon (R-Calif.), the chairman of the House Armed Services committee, talks a tough line on the defense budget. Members of his committee, as well as "the broader Congress—and the nation—must make tough choices in order to provide for America's common defense," he said when unveiling the panel's budget plan a little less than a month ago. He was echoing the House GOP's talking points on cost-cutting—an agenda that had spurred Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) to target earmarks last year. "Earmarks have become a symbol of a Congress that has broken faith with the people," the incoming speaker proclaimed last November, after his incoming majority banned the age-old maneuver of sneaking pork spending into budget bills. Since then, McKeon has repeatedly declared how he and his colleagues have slashed fat from the Pentagon's and White House's military budget requests.
However, as it stripped money from the proposed budget, McKeon's committee quietly set aside $1 billion in a newly created fund, buried within section 1433 of its 920-page bill under the heading "Other Matters." Called the Mission Force Enhancement Transfer Fund, the money is ostensibly held in reserve so that the DOD can fund necessary projects at its discretion. In fact, the House budget would funnel more than $650 million from the MFET back to representatives' pet projects. Critics say this stealthy bit of accounting violates the House leadership's ban on earmarks and is little more than a "slush fund" for pork-barrel spending.

Details on the size or beneficiaries of the projects funded by the MFET are hard to discern from the defense bill's lengthy list of procurements. But armed services committee members on both sides of the aisle have left clues. In the days following the voice vote approving their budget, they pumped out press releases trumpeting the projects they'd scored for their districts. Since the MFET funds came from other cuts in the Pentagon budget, the members could claim their projects would be offset by spending cuts elsewhere. Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.), a tea party freshman who sees himself as a budget hawk, secured $8 million for engines for Army drones, funded by savings from "wasteful DOD offsets." Rep. Chris Gibson (R-N.Y.) bragged that he'd secured a federal study to open a nanotechnology lab on the SUNY-Albany campus in his district, as well as $7 million in funding for additional nanotech research. Rep. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), announced $3 million in funding for a nonprofit called the Technology Ventures Corporation, which would "help expand innovation in New Mexico's emerging satellite industry."
These moves have angered deficit hawks from both parties. The new fund's workings are so mysterious that even the congressional rank and file have only a vague sense of where the money's going. It "not only circumvents the current moratorium [on earmarks] but is actually less transparent than the earmarking process that was in place prior to the moratorium," complained Rep. Claire McCaskill, a Missouri Democrat who is aligned with some tea party Republicans in opposing the fund's creative accounting methods. "This is disappointing and disingenuous." McCaskill sent a brusque letter (PDF) to McKeon and Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), the ranking Democrat on the armed services committe, decrying the MFET kitty as a "slush fund" for earmarks cobbled together from "unexplained and unjustified" cuts elsewhere.
Rep. Jeff Flake, a conservative Arizona Republican, also expressed dismay over the scheme. "To identify a billion dollars in savings, then to move it into a new fund and then allow members to designate their own priorities and take $650 [million]—I am just not sure what this is all about," he said on the House floor. In sponsoring an amendment to apply the fund's unspent balance—about $350 million—to paying down the national debt, Flake cited news reports describing the fund as a pet-project jackpot. "This would be similar to the earmarking culture that we have had around here, a culture that hopefully has ended and that we can move beyond," he said. "So I hope this is not what we are seeing here." Asked whether Flake considers the MFET funding to be earmark spending, a spokeswoman for the representative would only say that "Congressman Flake has some concerns and is working to get them addressed."
Does the MFET fund violate the spirit of the earmark ban? "It violates a lot more than the spirit," laughs Winslow Wheeler, director of the Straus Military Reform Project at the Center for Defense Information and a former staffer for senators from both parties. The current defense bill contains earmark-style procurements, just like all its predecessors, he says. "The only difference is that we don't even have the cursory nod toward transparency that we did in the earmark process," he asserts, referring to former Speaker Nancy Pelosi's requirement that members disclose their pet Pentagon projects. "It's a real step backwards."
Armed Services Committe chairman McKeon defended the MFET funding scheme on the House floor, saying the cash would only be spent "in furthering national security objectives" with Pentagon approval. "If we find any member pressuring the Department of Defense to use any funds other than to comply with competitive, merit-based solutions, we will go after them," he said.
That's plausible deniability, says Wheeler. While the Defense department has control over the fund on paper, members of the armed services committee can use their sway with informal military contacts to funnel the dollars straight to their pork projects. "If it survives the legislative process," he says, "the Pentagon will start getting phone calls and letters saying, 'Of course, the appropriations budget actually meant this.'"
The plan's survival is not assured. The Senate is expected to come up with its own defense budget proposals this month, and whatever bill it passes will have to be reconciled with the House plan before heading to President Obama's desk. In the meantime, debate over the House's fund for stealth earmarks could further inflame tensions between veteran Republicans and their junior tea party colleagues. "An awful lot of activists in the tea party movement are veterans who had hands-on experience with wasteful and inefficient spending in the Defense Department," Dick Armey, the former House majority leader and cofounder of the tea party group FreedomWorks, told Bloomberg earlier this week. "If you think you can sit in office and be a zealot on cutting everything except your pet projects, it don't work that way."

Adam Weinstein is Mother Jones' national security reporter. For more of his stories, click here or follow him on Twitter. Get Adam Weinstein's RSS feed.

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