RT News Sorry, Mr. President. A US Federal judge has clarified a decision made last month with some news sure to upset the Obama administration: the White House cannot use the NDAA to indefinitely detain American citizens.
Judge Katherine B. Forrest has answered a request made by US President Barack Obama last month to more carefully explain a May 16 ruling made in a Southern District of New York courtroom regarding the National Defense Authorization Act. Clarifying the meaning behind her injunction, Judge Forrest confirms in an eight-pagememorandum opinion this week that the NDAA’s controversial provision that permits indefinite detention cannot be used on any of America’s own citizens.
Last month Judge Forrest ruled in favor of a group of journalists and activists whom filed a suit challenging the constitutionality of Section 1021 of the NDAA, a defense spending bill signed into law by President Obama on New Year’s Eve. Specifically, Judge Forrest said in her injunction that the legislation contained elements that had a“chilling impact on First Amendment rights” and ruled that no, the government cannot imprison Americans over suspected ties with terrorists.
“In the face of what could be indeterminate military detention, due process requires more,” said the judge.
The Obama administration responded nine days later by asking Judge Forrest to reconsider her ruling, adding that, in the interim, the government would interpret the injunction to mean that only the few plaintiffs listed on the lawsuit would be excluded from indefinite detention. One of those named, journalist Chris Hedges, had previously said, “I have had dinner more times than I can count with people whom this country brands as terrorists … but that does not make me one.”
Responding to the White House’s demands, Judge Forrest writes in a June 6 memo, “Put more bluntly, the May 16 order enjoined enforcement of Section 1021(b)(2) against anyone until further action by this, or a higher, court — or by Congress. This order should eliminate any doubt as to the May 16 order’s scope.”
Judge Forrest does include in her ruling, however, that Americans can be indefinitely detained, but only providing that the government can link suspects directly to the September 11 terrorist attacks.
Attorney Carl Meyer represented the plaintiffs in the lawsuit and told RT last month that he expected the Obama administration to challenge Judge Forrest’s ruling, but warned that “it may not be in their best interest because there are so many people from all sides of the political spectrum opposed to this law.”
Previously, state lawmakers in both Utah and Virginia have proposed legislation that would negate provisions of the NDAA on a local level.
Judge Forrest. It pleases me to no end that the constitution is finally being upheld. Thank you, sincerely for defending the citizens of our great nation.
Good for Judge Forrest!…..let us see if wee cannot prevent….
Thrift Store America
You can see it in the real estate. You can feel the retreat from prosperity and purpose. You can sense the poverty and the loss of an entire generation of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness… and you can see the, “beginning of the end”, for the America of our childhood conditioning.
Lost in the All-American, time-honored barrage of local moving sales, rummage & yard sales, and the sad but admirable explosion of Thrift and Second-Hand Stores, you can witness the decay of the legend and myth,…the stories told to us in our youth of what America was supposed to be,…and to be about.
The signs are clear on a local level; uncounted closed down businesses, thousands, if not millions of houses that are boarded up to avoid uninhabited damage. Even in the homes that are abandoned, but not boarded up, you can feel the desperation of The American Dream? You know you are broke when you can’t afford to board up a foreclosed home…? I am certainly no college degreed economist, and most of what I’ve learned is through my international experiences, but it seems to me that when the number of Thrift Stores coming online outnumbers the number of new Starbucks and McDonald’s,…the country may have a bit of a problem?
The truly frightening signals are those which smolder out of the burn-pit of our corrupt, unethical government leadership; unmanageable debt, increased police abuses, dead and assaulted members of the “public”, a citizenry grown weary of cow-towing to political, government and “law enforcement” systems that are fraying badly at their ethical edges… and have little or no respect for our Constitutional protections and political limits.
If not for the deadly oil and chemical dispersant wafting over our southern coasts, the radioactive waste misting those of us along the West Coast and the purposeful flooding of the Midwest, perhaps the Citizens of the country may have the time to pay attention to our upcoming political circus, commonly referred to as elections. But really…how many Citizens really still believe in the American Elective process? How many still hold on to that myth of one-man-one-vote, especially when you can push the right button on the voting machine and stand there watching as the vote changes for an opponent? How many Americans still believe in the process?
Not many I’d bet.
How long are we as a people going to sit and be told what do, told what is right, and spoken down to as though mere children? How long can an entire population of a country sit and be lectured to, “how we shouldn’t worry our feeble-little heads”… with the “complex workings of the government”?
How many more years of kidnapping and torture are we going to allow our government to perform?
Will my grandchildren someday read a book, just as we now gaze at the stories and photos of the Holocaust? Will my great-grandchildren someday look down upon a similar book, and wonder why Great-Grand-Dad didn’t do a thing to stop the government from torturing and killing its Citizens… and others? How will we explain such behavior being accepted with no probable cause, no trial, no verdict…just turn them into dead people because “The Government” says they should be? Are we that far gone, that we will just continue to accept this? Are we waiting for someone on a white horse and lone-ranger music in the background before we stand up and say, “No more”?
I can understand, given the ethical manner in which government has been managed in my lifetime, I can understand why some would still be willing to accept or believe the proclamations of our morally supreme Leaders? After all, look how up front they have been with us over the years…JFK, RFK, MLK, Vietnam, Watergate, Iran-Contra, Mena-Arkansas, The Clinton Criminal Class, Panama, Iraq I & II, Afghanistan, The Foreclosure Swindle, 911…and so on, and so on and so on?
I can understand why “we the people” would find no need to examine these illegal, immoral and unethical activities, or why such behavior keeps occurring in “The Shining City on the Hill”? In fact, the light from D.C. is so corporately Bright… one wonders how it could continue to be so infested. Who knows…perhaps the Bankers will loan us enough money to hire exterminators?
Unfortunately, you can also see the growing desperation in the hard-scrabble part of America…the “Appalachia Sliver” of the American conscience, where the words poverty and poor take on a whole new meaning. The sad part is, we are not alone in our ever-growing Appalachia Experience, and after a recent ten-day trip across half the country, we were witness to the ever-expanding condition known officially as a “Recession”,…or in certain parts of the country,…you’ll even get to experience another “Great Depression”,…you know, something to help you bond with your indigent Grandmother, as you compare who had it “worse”.
But as a retired, twenty-year veteran employee of The Federal Government, including over two-decades as a “federally protected whistle-blower” (as humorous as that is), I know of the nature of our government leadership, and in my opinion, Webster’s Dictionary is going to need a new definition of the word “corrupt” by the time our country falls apart.
Or, until we realize that we still have the power and unified strength to wrestle the mechanics of government… back from these “Continuity of Government” traitors.
As a first step, I would recommend the following:
–
A National Constitutional Convention – designed to re-invigorate the original founding concepts, rights and status of American Citizens, while amending The Constitution for a 21st century America and its social realities. Additionally, the NCC will be empowered to impeach every member of the standing US Government, and will remove them from office. And by Impeach and Remove, I mean all of them. Every standing member of Congress, The Senate, The President and Vice President, and especially the Supreme Court which voted to allow and approve kidnapping and torture. All of them, gone.
– National Grand Jury – impaneled for whatever period of time is necessary to investigate and prosecute all members of government known to have violated their oaths of office, as well as committing treason, larceny and murder on an international scale, with no statute of limitations. NGJ-Citizen Investigators should be required to open up all of the American Government Archives across our entire history, and we as a people should be told the truth with regard to historic criminal activities.
– Additionally, the NGJ will be empowered to dismantle (through force if necessary) the CIA, the FBI, all “Continuity of Government” plans, operations and operatives, including the US Department of Justice, the EPA, The DoD and every other liberty-sucking parasite that still exists within our compromised government. (These entities can all be reconstructed at a later date, under more limited and ethical standards, if necessary)
– Freeze & Seize Financial Assets- Freeze and seize all financial assets of any member of government for the last forty years. All of them…seize all of their assets, and create a legal process or method for the “innocent” to get their assets returned to them (perhaps with interest). However, for the vast majority of traitorous souls who have been abusing their positions and the citizens for well over forty years…make them prove that the fortune is legally, ethically theirs; make them prove it didn’t come from decades of corrupt acts. Make them show that their ill-gotten millions in self-worth did not come from abusing their oaths or position.
– If not, just like we ordinary citizens who have tolerated our cars being impounded, our property seized and the other elements of the current two-tiered justice system, let the thieves and killers of the last forty years fight to stay out of prison, the death-chamber, or the poor house… just like the rest of us.
Regards,
RJ O’Guillory
Author-
Webster Groves-The Life of an Insane Family
RJ O’Guillory,
We do not need a Constitutional Convention to change our law. What we need is for we the people to enforce our law as it was written by our founding fathers. The Constitution, in its body, was first violated a long time ago. What we need is to undo what has been done.
I’ll be straight forward with you. I, as an individual free nationalist of the United States, will not be lulled into trusting any other citizen to look out for my rights. The way the Constitution reads as originally written, I am empowered to enforce my rights and with deadly violence if necessary. That needs no changing.
As for our Constitution working in the 21st century, corruption and evil knows no confines of time and neither does the antidote.
With these two exceptions, I have to say this is an excellent piece.
Way to go judge Forrest! Finally someone has read the constitution.
Our leaders are in love with power all in the name of protection from the boogey man.
Fear is no way to lead.
Now if someone would only do this for the Patriot Act.
United States of GITMO. Has a ring to it eh? Thanx judge for swimming upstream. We’re lucky this wasn’t in front of the Supremes. We’d be toast.
No to NDAA, way to go judge Forrest!
Americans WILL REMEMBER THIS, Judge Forrest. THANK YOU! By the way, how’s that “Hope & Change” working out for all you 2008 Obama Supporters? (MORONS!)
Same as it would for supporters of the last few and likely next few presidents.
What too many citizens fail to realize is that Clinton, Bush, Obama and Romney are all on the same agenda.
Absolutely. THAT is why Ron Paul is the ONLY REAL CANDIDATE in the 2012 Presidential Race. MOST Americans are so THOROUGHLY BRAIN-WASHED, and un-educated, and ill-informed, that they can’t even see, that Ron Paul is literally the ONLY candidate in the race, with anything even approximating INTEGRITY! Which is why, they keep going to the polls, and “voting” for one of two pre-selected candidates, that will do NOTHING MORE, than serve their Central Bank and Wall St. masters.
He never promised us change for the better. Obviously, he meant change for the worse, and sure has delivered on that!
The supporters of liberty and justice wish to thank Judge Forrest from the bottom of our hearts for standing up to defend our Constitution. May you be always accompanied by the truth in all your endeavors.
The law should have been changed to read that we could detain anybody parading as a natural born citizen who lied his way into the presidency.
Isn’t this the bill that Obama explicitly stated he wouldn’t be making use of the ‘indefinite detention’ portion of because he didn’t like it?
Of the three branches of government, this is the last standing protector of our constitution. The other two branches have failed to uphold their oath. What are they there for? Above all else, to protect and defend the constitution, not to seek unlimited power of a totalitarian state. People should not disappear by decree in our nation, as our forefathers fought with their precious blood to protect against such tyranny. Yet it’s the hallmark of every evil dictatorship, and it’s our duty as citizens to take note of every official who has turned from our constitution on this issue and kick them out of office in the upcoming elections. No exceptions.
Have you ever wondered what you would have done as Adolf Hitler brought on ever increasingly tyrannic edicts to Germany? Have you wondered how the Germans could be so foolish? Have you thought how it might be different if it were America, and how Americans might stand up against that sort of attacks on their rights? Now is the time to recognize that they have been in our shoes, and we must kick out these fascist minded officials while we can still speak our minds about it. It would be easy to fail to act, just as they did.
If you have a congressman who stood up against NDAA Section 1021, he deserves respect and honor for having the backbone to stand against the tide for our national heritage. Look up now their voting record, and the date of the next election. Be sure to be registered to vote as required, and mark the date of the election. Don’t miss it. Our forefathers gave blood, so we should not shrink from our duty to mark a box and sternly warn others to do likewise. The blood of their tyranny should not rest on our heads for failure to do such a simple task.
The highest of commendations to this honorable judge. This is one that should be considered for supreme court justice for heroically standing up as our last line of defense. To do that, again we need to clean house in congress and the white house, as they also will choose and affirm our future justices.
Best of wishes to the truly honorable judge Katherine B. Forrest.
Fantastic comment Ted I posted it on my wall and told everyone Ted is responsible for this great comment concerning NDAA and Judge Forrest. I like the part that voting is a duty and we owe it to our fore-fathers.
We owe it to ourselves, our children and grandchildren also.
Thanks, NOYB