But sup­port­ers of the bill say that all those com­plaints are just hys­ter­i­cal myths:

Fri­day, Dec 16, 2011 5:56 AM Cen­tral Stan­dard Time
Three myths about the deten­tion bill
By Glenn Greenwald

Con­dem­na­tion of Pres­i­dent Obama is intense, and grow­ing, as a result of his announced intent to sign into law the indef­i­nite deten­tion bill embed­ded in the 2012 National Defense Autho­riza­tion Act (NDAA). These denun­ci­a­tions come not only from the nation’s lead­ing civil lib­er­ties and human rights groups, but also from the pro-Obama New York Times Edi­to­r­ial Page, which today has a scathing Edi­to­r­ial describ­ing Obama’s stance as “a com­plete polit­i­cal cave-in, one that rein­forces the impres­sion of a fum­bling pres­i­dency” and lament­ing that “the bill has so many other objec­tion­able aspects that we can’t go into them all,” as well as from vocal Obama sup­port­ers such as Andrew Sul­li­van, who wrote yes­ter­day that this episode is “another sign that his cam­paign pledge to be vig­i­lant about civil lib­er­ties in the war on ter­ror was a lie.” In dam­age con­trol mode, White-House-allied groups are now try­ing to ride to the res­cue with attacks on the ACLU and dis­mis­sive belit­tling of the bill’s dangers.

For that rea­son, it is very worth­while to briefly exam­ine — and debunk — the three prin­ci­pal myths being spread by sup­port­ers of this bill, and to do so very sim­ply: by cit­ing the rel­e­vant pro­vi­sions of the bill, as well as the rel­e­vant pas­sages of the orig­i­nal 2001 Autho­riza­tion to Use Mil­i­tary Force (AUMF), so that every­one can judge for them­selves what this bill actu­ally includes (this is all above and beyond the evi­dence I assem­bled in writ­ing about this bill yes­ter­day):

Myth # 1: This bill does not cod­ify indef­i­nite detention

...

Myth #2: The bill does not expand the scope of the War on Ter­ror as defined by the 2001 AUMF

...

Myth #3: U.S. cit­i­zens are exempted from this new bill

...

Even if it were true that this bill changes noth­ing when com­pared to how the Exec­u­tive Branch has been inter­pret­ing and exer­cis­ing the pow­ers of the old AUMF, there are seri­ous dan­gers and harms from hav­ing Con­gress — with bipar­ti­san spon­sors, a Demo­c­ra­tic Sen­ate and a GOP House — put its insti­tu­tional, statu­tory weight behind pow­ers pre­vi­ously claimed and seized by the Pres­i­dent alone. That cod­i­fi­ca­tion entrenches these pow­ers. As the New York Times Edi­to­r­ial today put it: the bill con­tains “ter­ri­ble new mea­sures that will make indef­i­nite deten­tion and mil­i­tary tri­als a per­ma­nent part of Amer­i­can law.”

What’s par­tic­u­larly ironic (and reveal­ing) about all of this is that for­mer White House coun­sel Greg Craig assured The New Yorker‘s Jane Mayer back in Feb­ru­ary, 2009 that it’s “hard to imag­ine Barack Obama as the first Pres­i­dent of the United States to intro­duce a preventive-detention law.” Four months later, Pres­i­dent Obama pro­posed exactly such a law — one that The New York Times described as “a depar­ture from the way this coun­try sees itself, as a place where peo­ple in the grip of the gov­ern­ment either face crim­i­nal charges or walk free” — and now he will sign such a scheme into law.

In 50 years minori­ties will own the U.S., being in the major­ity, just as they do now in your Cal­i­for­nia that you deem lost. I don’t see that as a hope­less sit­u­a­tion, but I do see that as a hope­less sit­u­a­tion for white supre­ma­tism in the U.S.A.

Sad & omi­nous news to be sure, Dave.
How­ever, though, I am also see­ing a sil­ver lin­ing on the hori­zon as well:
1.)Scott Walker is get­ting ham­mered by his oppo­nents in the Bad­ger State right now. Even some Repub­li­cans are start­ing to back away from him now.
2.)Have you, by any chance, come across any news from Min­nesota? The state GOP is start­ing to IMPLODE over there...... http://www.minnpost.com/dailyglean/2011/12/05/33563/minnesota_gop_in_turmoil
3.)The OWS move­ment is still grow­ing.
4.)A large num­ber of peo­ple have come out against SOPA in recent weeks; fact is, vastly out­num­ber­ing its sup­port­ers! Hell, even Google and Yahoo! have opposed it.
5.)NDAA oppo­si­tion is grow­ing, too. Last I checked, already 25,000 peo­ple had signed the bill.

Things may look bleak.......and they kinda are. =( But this is our chance to REALLY start hit­ting hard. Let’s spread the word so more peo­ple can wake up to real­ity as it is. I’m ready. Are you guys? =)

[...] Bye Bye Democ­racy… This entry was posted in Military-Industrial Com­plex, Police State, Total­i­tar­i­an­ism and tagged CIA, Civil Lib­er­ties, Coleen Row­ley, Dave Emory, FBI, NDAA 2012, Stop Online Piracy Act, Susan Lin­dauer. Book­mark the perma­link. ← Marine Le Pen invitée de « C/Politique » sur France 5 [...]

2007: Hal­libur­ton sub­sidiary KBR receives $385 Bil­lion con­tract to build domes­tic deten­tion camps in U.S.

http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/articles/14-homeland-security-contracts-kbr-to-build-detention-centers-in-the-us/

On tonight’s New Year’s Eve sign­ing of the NDAA into law — rem­i­nis­cent of George H.W. Bush’s Christ­mas Eve par­dons of Iran-Contra crim­i­nals — these Halliburton/KBR camps are the “reser­va­tions” Mr. Obama is speak­ing of hav­ing tonight (as in “Indian Reser­va­tions” or “Japan­ese Intern­ment Reservations”):

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/31/obama-defense-bill_n_1177836.html

1984: Rex 84 was the first plan to relo­cate U.S. dis­si­dents into deten­tion camps. This plan was drafted by NSC oper­a­tive Oliver North.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rex_84

@R. Wil­son: Def­i­nitely true about Rex 84, although I do believe it was orig­i­nally tar­geted against so-called ‘non-whites’, aka, African-Americans and Chi­canos, because of its ori­gins in the King Alfred Plan, and I betcha most of the peo­ple tar­geted at first would prob­a­bly be Latin Amer­i­can immi­grants and Arabs, although I don’t doubt some black & white left­ies could be thrown in as well, espe­cially if they were involved in O.W.S. or any other sim­i­lar movement.

Oh great, the Supreme Court appear just made its first rul­ing on the secret expan­sive eaves­drop­ping pro­gram started after 9/11. And in a 5–4 deci­sion the court ruled that the pro­gram can­not be chal­lenged in court because it’s a secret pro­gram and, there­fore, the plain­tiffs don’t have any evi­dence that they were being spied upon. Big Brother’s all see­ing eye prefers to avoid scrutiny:

Wired
Supreme Court Thwarts Chal­lenge to War­rant­less Surveillance

By David Kravets
02.26.13

A divided Supreme Court halted a legal chal­lenge Tues­day to a once-secret war­rant­less sur­veil­lance project that gob­bles up Amer­i­cans’ elec­tronic com­mu­ni­ca­tions, a pro­gram that Con­gress even­tu­ally legal­ized in 2008 and again in 2012.

The 5–4 deci­sion (.pdf) by Jus­tice Samuel Alito was a clear vic­tory for the Pres­i­dent Barack Obama admin­is­tra­tion, which like its pre­de­ces­sor, argued that gov­ern­ment wire­tap­ping laws can­not be chal­lenged in court. What’s more, the out­come marks the first time the Supreme Court decided any case touch­ing on the eaves­drop­ping pro­gram that was secretly employed in the wake of 9/11 by the Pres­i­dent George W. Bush admin­is­tra­tion, and even­tu­ally cod­i­fied into law twice by Congress.

A high court major­ity con­cluded that, because the eaves­drop­ping is done secretly, the Amer­i­can Civil Lib­er­ties Union, jour­nal­ists and human-rights groups that sued to nul­lify the law have no legal stand­ing to sue — because they have no evi­dence they are being tar­geted by the FISA Amend­ments Act. Some of the plain­tiffs, which the court labeled “respon­dents,” are also jour­nal­ists and among other things claimed the 2008 leg­is­la­tion has chilled their speech and vio­lated their Fourth Amend­ment pri­vacy rights.

The act, known as §1881, autho­rizes the gov­ern­ment to elec­tron­i­cally eaves­drop on Amer­i­cans’ phone calls and e-mails with­out a probable-cause war­rant so long as one of the par­ties to the com­mu­ni­ca­tion is out­side the United States. The com­mu­ni­ca­tions may be inter­cepted “to acquire for­eign intel­li­gence information.”

The FISA Amend­ments Act gen­er­ally requires the For­eign Intel­li­gence Sur­veil­lance Court to rubber-stamp terror-related elec­tronic sur­veil­lance requests. The gov­ern­ment does not have to iden­tify the tar­get or facil­ity to be mon­i­tored. It can begin sur­veil­lance a week before mak­ing the request, and the sur­veil­lance can con­tinue dur­ing the appeals process if, in a rare case, the secret FISA court rejects the sur­veil­lance application.

“Yet respon­dents have no actual knowl­edge of the Government’s §1881a tar­get­ing prac­tices. Instead, respon­dents merely spec­u­late and make assump­tions about whether their com­mu­ni­ca­tions with their for­eign con­tacts will be acquired under §1881a,” Alito wrote.

Join­ing Alito were Chief Jus­tice John Roberts, and Jus­tices Anthony Kennedy, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.

In dis­sent, Jus­tice Stephen Breyer said stand­ing should have been granted. He said that the spy­ing, “Indeed it is a s likely to take place as are most future events that com­mon­sense infer­ence and ordi­nary knowl­edge of human nature tell us will happen.”

Sign­ing the dis­sent were Jus­tices Ruth Bader Gins­burg, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor.

...

But even if the Supreme Court sided with the ACLU on Tues­day, that does not nec­es­sar­ily mean the con­sti­tu­tion­al­ity of the FISA Amend­ments Act would have been lit­i­gated. That’s because the only issue before the high court was whether the plain­tiffs had the legal stand­ing to bring the case. Because they don’t, the case is over.

Had the jus­tices gone the other way, the law­suit would have returned to a New York fed­eral court­room where, if past is pro­logue, the Obama admin­is­tra­tion likely would play its trump card: an asser­tion of the pow­er­ful state secrets priv­i­lege that lets the exec­u­tive branch effec­tively kill law­suits by claim­ing they threaten to expose national secu­rity secrets.

The courts largely defer to such claims. But in a rare excep­tion in 2008, a San Fran­cisco fed­eral judge refused to throw out a wire­tap­ping law­suit against AT&T under the state secrets priv­i­lege. The AT&T law­suit was later killed any­way, because the FISA Amend­ments Act also granted the phone com­pa­nies retroac­tive legal immu­nity for their alleged par­tic­i­pa­tion in the NSA spy­ing program.