NDAA Conference Committee Strips Right to Jury Trial…(Welcome To USSA!!)
Robert Wenzel
Economicpolicyjournal.com
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 19, 2012
The very weak protections for Americans that were added to the National Defense Authorization Act for 2013 via an amendment that was introduced by Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Mike Lee, and supported by Sen Rand Paul, has been stripped by the NDAA conference committee. Even those weak protections are now gone. Welcome to the United Soviet States of America.
Today, Rand Paul issued the following statement regarding the newly released NDAA conference report.
“The amendment, introduced by Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) and which passed with a 67-29 vote on Nov. 29, was designed to guarantee Americans the right to due process and a jury trial. These are basic and core American legal privileges prescribed in our Bill of Rights, which have been observed since our nation’s founding. Removing these indefinite detention protections now means that the NDAA is in violation of the Fourth and Fifth Amendments of the Constitution.
“The decision by the NDAA conference committee, led by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) to strip the National Defense Authorization Act of the amendment that protects American citizens against indefinite detention now renders the entire NDAA unconstitutional,” Sen. Paul said.
“I voted against NDAA in 2011 because it did not contain the proper constitutional protections. When my Senate colleagues voted to include those protections in the 2012 NDAA through the Feinstein-Lee Amendment last month, I supported this act,” Sen. Paul continued. “But removing those protections now takes us back to square one and does as much violence to the Constitution as last year’s NDAA. When the government can arrest suspects without a warrant, hold them without trial, deny them access to counsel or admission of bail, we have shorn the Bill of Rights of its sanctity.
The Rest…HERE
