Virginia declares “emperor has no clothes”: NDAA nullified
Carl Herman
Activist Post
Virginia's Senate voted today (39-1) to nullify NDAA 2012 provisions to seize American citizens at the dictate of the federal executive branch. They joined the House's 96-4 vote.
Do an Internet news search for this story (like this); you won't find any corporate media coverage. This is what Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld meant with Information Operations Road Map (specifically with endnote 76 in an article on the also non-covered Martin Luther King civil trial that found the US government guilty of assassinating Dr. King), and what CIA-disclosed Operation Mockingbird was meant to achieve: no corporate media opposition.
Again, here's NDAA:
"The US Constitution refutes the so-called “National Defense Authorization Act” provisions for US military to seize people in America (here, here, here). The 5th and 6th Amendments of the US Constitution promise that if the government is to seize you, they damn sure have to demonstrate you’ve committed a crime (my comments). Note that these promises apply to all persons, not just citizens:
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury (that means a jury of one’s peers, not the dictatorship of “the leader” – “fuehrer” in German)… nor shall any person… be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law;…
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury…, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.
The Oath to the US Constitution is first and primary for the US military to defend America and our freedoms. By definition, America’s freedoms are in our Constitution. The respect Americans and the world have for US military is in proportion to upholding the freedoms in the US Constitution.
US military are trained to refuse unlawful orders. The Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) Article 92 makes US military duty clear to obey lawful orders. The primary source for lawful orders is the US Constitution. A nation’s constitution are its central and defining laws.
Any order that interferes with constitutional law is by definition an unlawful order that must be refused. Using the US military to seize Americans is such an obvious breach of the US Constitution that it evokes the legal term, ab initio: void and without legal effect from the beginning."
HB 1160 passed by Virginia’s legislative branch by a combined vote of 135-5:
Unlawful detention of United States citizens. Prevents any agency, political subdivision, employee, or member of the military of Virginia from assisting an agency of the armed forces of the United States in the conduct of the investigation, prosecution, or detention of a United States citizen in violation of the United States Constitution, Constitution of Virginia, or any Virginia law or regulation.
Tenth Amendment Center’s article excerpt:
While the bill doesn’t directly block federal agents from carrying out their new NDAA powers, this is part and parcel of a larger NDAA nullification campaign around the country. Currently 7 local governments have passed resolutions ranging from a denouncement of the federal act in three Colorado counties to requiring noncompliance with it in places like Fairfax, CA and Northampton, MA. And, 7 states are currently considering legislation like Virginia’s – all based off the model legislation provided by the Tenth Amendment Center, the Liberty Preservation Act.
THREE STEPS, MAYBE JUST TWO?
Here at the Tenth Amendment Center, we define nullification as “any act or set of acts which has as its end result a particular law being rendered null, void, or unenforceable in a specific area.” With that definition in mind, we see nullification of the new “kidnapping powers” of the NDAA as a multi-step process.
1. Education - awareness. This is where local and state resolutions come into play. When something is passed, even non-binding, it gets press coverage about the idea that the local and state people have a role to play in this.
2. Non-compliance – as just passed by the Virginia House and Senate, and being considered in various other states and local communities. The message? Your unconstitutional federal act is not welcome here!
Gandhi, Rosa Parks and others didn’t take it beyond there. We recognize that in almost every situation, the federal government relies on states being silent or even fully complicit. Information sharing, logistics, and even national guard troops carrying out orders are activities that could be asked of state and local governments. Could the feds still kidnap at that point if the state refuses compliance? Sure, “legally” nothing has changed. But if 10-15 states and a hundred or so counties and cities are making clear they will not comply and that they consider the act unconstitutional, it’s going to be much tougher for them, if not politically impossible, than if everybody just complied and waited for the courts or another election to “save” them.
3. Resistance and physical interposition – Some, of course, believe that the feds can never be stopped without a physical resistance. But this may not be required if enough states and localities take noncompliance seriously in #2 above. But, we also see the value in running the full spectrum of options from the simplest to the strongest in various parts of the country. In Washington State, the bill there is full non-compliance. Matt Shea and Jason Overstreet, the primary sponsors, feel they can get that moving forward, and hope to follow up with criminal penalties in a future bill. Then, potentially another to require arrest of fed agents for kidnapping could be considered. In Missouri, they’re tracking along the same lines.
In Tennessee, though, the bill being considered right now refers to indefinite detention as a “kidnapping” charge and requires the local sheriffs to stop them. (info here)
Carl Herman is a National Board Certified Teacher in economics, government, and history with a passion for research, education, and lobbying for improved public policy. See more articles by Carl Herman Here. Contact him at Carl_Herman@post.harvard.edu
*****************************************************************************
Geithner is a criminal and it's good that people are figuring it out.
******************************************************************************
Obama is a thug, and I'm glad someone is finally pointing it out.
Blurred Line Between Espionage and Truth
By DAVID CARR
Published: February 26, 2012
Last Wednesday in the White House briefing room, the administration’s press secretary, Jay Carney, opened on a somber note, citing the deaths of Marie Colvin and Anthony Shadid, two reporters who had died “in order to bring truth” while reporting in Syria.
Jake Tapper of ABC News questioned the Obama administration's efforts to prosecute officials.
Jake Tapper, the White House correspondent for ABC News, pointed out that the administration had lauded brave reporting in distant lands more than once and then asked, “How does that square with the fact that this administration has been so aggressively trying to stop aggressive journalism in the United States by using the Espionage Act to take whistle-blowers to court?”
He then suggested that the administration seemed to believe that “the truth should come out abroad; it shouldn’t come out here.”
Fair point. The Obama administration, which promised during its transition to power that it would enhance “whistle-blower laws to protect federal workers,” has been more prone than any administration in history in trying to silence and prosecute federal workers.
The Espionage Act, enacted back in 1917 to punish those who gave aid to our enemies, was used three times in all the prior administrations to bring cases against government officials accused of providing classified information to the media. It has been used six times since the current president took office.
Setting aside the case of Pfc. Bradley Manning, an Army intelligence analyst who is accused of stealing thousands of secret documents, the majority of the recent prosecutions seem to have everything to do with administrative secrecy and very little to do with national security.
In case after case, the Espionage Act has been deployed as a kind of ad hoc Official Secrets Act, which is not a law that has ever found traction in America, a place where the people’s right to know is viewed as superseding the government’s right to hide its business.
In the most recent case, John Kiriakou, a former C.I.A. officer who became a Democratic staff member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was charged under the Espionage Act with leaking information to journalists about other C.I.A. officers, some of whom were involved in the agency’s interrogation program, which included waterboarding.
For those of you keeping score, none of the individuals who engaged in or authorized the waterboarding of terror suspects have been prosecuted, but Mr. Kiriakou is in federal cross hairs, accused of talking to journalists and news organizations, including The New York Times.
Mr. Tapper said that he had not planned on raising the issue, but hearing Mr. Carney echo the praise for reporters who dug deep to bring out the truth elsewhere got his attention.
“I have been following all of these case, and it’s not like they are instances of government employees leaking the location of secret nuclear sites,” Mr. Tapper said. “These are classic whistle-blower cases that dealt with questionable behavior by government officials or its agents acting in the name of protecting America.”
Mr. Carney said in the briefing that he felt it was appropriate “to honor and praise the bravery” of Ms. Colvin and Mr. Shadid, but he did not really engage Mr. Tapper’s broader question, saying he could not go into information about specific cases. He did not respond to an e-mail message seeking comment.
In one of the more remarkable examples of the administration’s aggressive approach, Thomas A. Drake, a former employee of the National Security Agency, was prosecuted under the Espionage Act last year and faced a possible 35 years in prison.
His crime? When his agency was about to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on a software program bought from the private sector intended to monitor digital data, he spoke with a reporter at The Baltimore Sun. He suggested an internally developed program that cost significantly less would be more effective and not violate privacy in the way the product from the vendor would. (He turned out to be right, by the way.)
He was charged with 10 felony counts that accused him of lying to investigators and obstructing justice. Last summer, the case against him collapsed, and he pleaded guilty to a single misdemeanor, of misuse of a government computer.
Jesselyn Radack, the director for national security and human rights at the Government Accountability Project, was one of the lawyers who represented him.
“The Obama administration has been quite hypocritical about its promises of openness, transparency and accountability,” she said. “All presidents hate leaks, but pursuing whistle-blowers as spies is heavy-handed and beyond the scope of the law.”
Mark Corallo, who served under Attorney General John D. Ashcroft during the Bush administration, told Adam Liptak of The New York Times this month that he was “sort of shocked” by the number of leak prosecutions under President Obama. “We would have gotten hammered for it,” he said.
As Mr. Liptak pointed out, it has become easier to ferret out leakers in a digital age, but just because it can be done doesn’t mean it should be.
These kinds of prosecutions can have ripples well beyond the immediate proceedings. Two reporters in Washington who work on national security issues said that the rulings had created a chilly environment between journalists and people who work at the various government agencies.
During a point in history when our government has been accused of sending prisoners to secret locations where they were said to have been tortured and the C.I.A. is conducting remote-controlled wars in far-flung places, it’s not a good time to treat the people who aid in the publication of critical information as spies.
And it’s worth pointing out that the administration’s emphasis on secrecy comes and goes depending on the news. Reporters were immediately and endlessly briefed on the “secret” operation that successfully found and killed Osama bin Laden. And the drone program in Pakistan and Afghanistan comes to light in a very organized and systematic way every time there is a successful mission.
There is plenty of authorized leaking going on, but this particular boat leaks from the top. Leaks from the decks below, especially ones that might embarrass the administration, have been dealt with very differently.
*****************************************************************************
I received several great charts the last few days.
******************************************************************************
Look at how much money was dished out to free agents this year.
******************************************************************************
Ron Paul hectored Ben Bernanke in Congress, slamming him for printing paper money and lying about the true rate of inflation.
At one point, he held up a silver coin, and talked about how much gasoline he could get with it, and how silver retained its value over time (unlike the dollar).
Anyway, we've never seen anyone measure gasoline against silver before, so we thought we'd do it.
The chart above shows how many gallons of gas you could get with an oz. of silver going back to 1990.
Back in about 1990, an ounce of silver only got you 4 gallons of gas. But as of very recently it got you 12 gallons of gas. However, thanks to the gas price surge and the fall in the price of silver, that's now down to 8 gallons per oz. So while that ounce of silver has done better than the dollar over time, it's still no ringing endorsement for price stability.
******************************************************************************
I'm not sure if you saw SBC interviewed by Seacrest, but I thought Ryan's reaction was really funny. What a whiney baby.
No comments:
Post a Comment