*Wow must watch* NDAA Lawsuit update: Hedges v Obama

I didn't even know about this lawsuit up until a few days ago but I'm so glad this battle has been taken to the courts.

He essentially implies that Obama and his administration NEEDS to keep NDAA legal so that they cannot be held accountable for kidnapping Americans without due process (war crime? treason? I don't know)

Chris Hedges is an author and Pulitzer Prize winning Journalist and senior fellow at The Nation Institute.



Background story:

Interesting video. I will have to double-check the case history, this guy's credentials/background, etc... but the video was certainly worth a listen. Whoever this guy is, he seemed as balanced, rational, and educated as you can expect a person to be, even acknowledged his biases...

Anyways, reviewing out loud. I do recommend watching the video though, and am very interested to see the resulting commentary from people that have been following this.

S@F OP....this is exactly the reason why I love ATS. I had heard nothing about this important
injunction against the NDAA. THIS IS BIG NEWS for liberty....

If I understand correctly the plaintiffs have prevailed and a court has issued an injunction
against the parts of the NDAA that deal with indefinite detention and ha beaus corpus (due process-
right to trial).

If the plaintiffs can win this trial this case will fast-track to SCOTUS

I'm crossing all my fingers, my toes, and my eyeballs

GO LIBERTY!

This case is extremely important, I hope more people will stand up, speak out, and get active locally in nullifying unconstitutional power grabs.

Obama is being exposed, they're all being exposed, we must continue to hold them all accountable.

The speaker in the video is legit.

His name is Chris Hedges.
His credentials:

Harvard grad
Pulitzer Prize winner
2002 Amnesty International Global Award for Human Rights Journalism
Worked two decades for the NY Times, foreign correspondent, fifty different countries
Published author of twenty books
Weekly published column
Has taught at Columbia, Princeton and NY University

I'm surprised at the lack of attention here for this post OP....taking a bite out of the NDAA or any other of the unconstitutional acts that have passed recently is very important news for the cause of liberty....
at least to me it is...

Originally posted by eLPresidente
This case is extremely important, I hope more people will stand up, speak out, and get active locally in nullifying unconstitutional power grabs.

Obama is being exposed, they're all being exposed, we must continue to hold them all accountable.

We are living in interesting times. I think we are teetering on the brink and if we don't stay vigilant and watchful, we may regret it. This is not a left/right matter, but a Constitutional one. Thanks for the vids, OP.

I'm not surprised many of you haven't heard about this (even though there's threads on it) because the Right doesn't talk about this. As I said during the election the GOP had the perfect legit material they needed to cost Obama some votes and they 'ignored' it. Gary Johnson, Jill Stein and even Ron Paul talked about this during their campaigns.

stopndaa.org has some more detailed information on the lawsuit. As does Chris Hedges site truthdig.com or just about any Occupy site.

The plaintiffs bringing suit against the Obama Administration are: Chris Hedges, Noam Chomsky, Daniel Ellsberg, Birgitta Jónsdóttir, Tangerine Bolen, Kai Wargalla, and Alexa O'brien.

Some threads on the topic:
www.abovetopsecret.com...

www.abovetopsecret.com...

reply to post by eLPresidente


One thing he is saying is that the Obama administration already has some people in this illegal system and is seeking to make it legal to cover themselves. They are already operating under nefarious legal opinion so they are seeking to cover themselves with this action.

Originally posted by Kali74
I'm not surprised many of you haven't heard about this (even though there's threads on it) because the Right doesn't talk about this. As I said during the election the GOP had the perfect legit material they needed to cost Obama some votes and they 'ignored' it. Gary Johnson, Jill Stein and even Ron Paul talked about this during their campaigns.

stopndaa.org has some more detailed information on the lawsuit. As does Chris Hedges site truthdig.com or just about any Occupy site.

The plaintiffs bringing suit against the Obama Administration are: Chris Hedges, Noam Chomsky, Daniel Ellsberg, Birgitta Jónsdóttir, Tangerine Bolen, Kai Wargalla, and Alexa O'brien.

Some threads on the topic:
www.abovetopsecret.com...

www.abovetopsecret.com...

Yea, the funniest part was that Romney couldn't talk about it because he supported NDAA as well.

Americans were none the wiser that both major party presidential candidates advocated policies that stripped them of the very rights that they were born with.

Blind patriotism, it needs a medical term.


Btw, Break the Set did an entire half hour show on NDAA and this lawsuit:

I especially love that Hedges is a liberal AND a socialist, and yet he is willing to refuse to drink the Obama kool-aid. As an intellectually formidable and balanced thinker as well as an authentic, old school (REAL) journalist, he actually makes a compelling case against NDAA and the mainstream media cannot demonize him as a conservative because - he's not! So I am thrilled that Hedges was the one to bring suit against this administration for this outrageous Act.

Originally posted by OuttaHere
I especially love that Hedges is a liberal AND a socialist, and yet he is willing to refuse to drink the Obama kool-aid. As an intellectually formidable and balanced thinker as well as an authentic, old school (REAL) journalist, he actually makes a compelling case against NDAA and the mainstream media cannot demonize him as a conservative because - he's not! So I am thrilled that Hedges was the one to bring suit against this administration for this outrageous Act.

yea totally agree, its sort of the point of progressivism. many of the fake progressives out there still refuse to believe Obama is actually capable of all of these things.

patriot act
ndaa
kill lists
guantanamo
drone program expansions

Wow, outstanding statement by Chris Hedges! Truth telling at its very best.

Thanks for providing that!

Found this in my Twitter feed.
Daniel Ellsberg on Feb.7,2013 after court.

Arguments have been heard from both sides now.
Decision to be made at a later date.

This is quite possible the most important case in the past 40 years.
If we lose this and Obama gets the NDAA its all over.
We will not only loose our right, and our childrens rights, we will lose
the option to stand up to anything in the future.
This gives the gooberment the power they have been wanting.

If this passes, sadly the only option left is all out war. Anything short of that
will be met with guys in vans with dark windows to take us away to undisclosed
location (fema camps) and put us where we can not stir things up.

reply to post by severdsoul


Obama didn't do this alone.
It was written in Congress and passed by both Houses and signed into Law 12/31/2011.

The lawsuit was filed to remove the indefinite detention provisions of the Act.

reply to post by Kali74


True, very true.. sad that all those people in the house actually
thought this was a good idea..
you would think some where along the way someone would of said
"WTF" did you read this.. just goes to show how little attention they
pay to things that get pushed through.
If they had read it all, someone would have to had to raise a stink about it.

reply to post by severdsoul


A few did.
It just didn't stop it.

Originally posted by Kali74
reply to post by severdsoul

 

Obama didn't do this alone.
It was written in Congress and passed by both Houses and signed into Law 12/31/2011.

The lawsuit was filed to remove the indefinite detention provisions of the Act.

If I recall correctly, he wanted in the NDAA 2011 bill and wouldn't sign the bill unless it was in there.

Judge determined it was unconstitutional and Obama sent his lawyers out to fight it, twice.

reply to post by eLPresidente


Yeah I wasn't trying to lessen Obama's guilt there, just broaden the scope so that people truly understand what we're facing and how it's being allowed to happen. Our checks and balances system is broken, maybe it has been broken for a long time.

Chris Hedges wrote a great editorial this morning...

His review of Section 1021 (b)(2)

The section permits the military to detain anyone, including U.S. citizens, who “substantially support”—an undefined legal term—al-Qaida, the Taliban or “associated forces,” again a term that is legally undefined. Those detained can be imprisoned indefinitely by the military and denied due process until “the end of hostilities.” In an age of permanent war this is probably a lifetime. Anyone detained under the NDAA can be sent, according to Section (c)(4), to any “foreign country or entity.” This is, in essence, extraordinary rendition of U.S. citizens. It empowers the government to ship detainees to the jails of some of the most repressive regimes on earth.

This paragraph instantly grabbed me.

If we lose in Hedges v. Obama—and it seems certain that no matter the outcome of the appeal this case will reach the Supreme Court—electoral politics and our rights as citizens will be as empty as those of Nero’s Rome. If we lose, the power of the military to detain citizens, strip them of due process and hold them indefinitely in military prisons will become a terrifying reality. Democrat or Republican. Occupy activist or libertarian. Socialist or tea party stalwart. It does not matter. This is not a partisan fight. Once the state seizes this unchecked power, it will inevitably create a secret, lawless world of indiscriminate violence, terror and gulags. I lived under several military dictatorships during the two decades I was a foreign correspondent. I know the beast.

Further down in the editorial he goes into real life moments, that should scare the living daylights out of us, ways in which whether under AUMF or Section 1021 are being used NOW to potentially set precedence for circumstances in which American citizens can be indefinitely detained, whether home or abroad.

Alexa O’Brien, another plaintiff and a co-founder of the US Day of Rage, learned after WikiLeaks released 5 million emails from Stratfor, a private security firm that does work for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the Marine Corps and the Defense Intelligence Agency, that Stratfor operatives were trying to link her and her organization to Islamic radicals, including al-Qaida, and sympathetic websites as well as jihadist ideology. If that link were made, she and those in her organization would not be immune from detention.

The government attempted in court last week to smear Sami Al-Hajj, a journalist for the Al-Jazeera news network who was picked up by the U.S. military and imprisoned for nearly seven years in Guantanamo. This, for me, was one of the most chilling moments in the hearing.
“Just calling yourself a journalist doesn’t make you a journalist, like Al-Hajj,” Loeb told the court. “He used journalism as a cover. He was a member of al-Qaida and provided Stinger missiles to al-Qaida.”

Al-Hajj, despite Loeb’s assertions, was never charged with any crimes. And the slander by Loeb only highlighted the potential for misuse of this provision of the NDAA if it is not struck down.

Granted Al-Hajj isn't American (all indefinite detention is disgusting and wrong) you can see how despite the Government saying journalists will be protected, they get to define whether you are a journalist or not.

truthdig