[QiuCIOdO]

Obama signs defense bill, pledges to maintain legal rights of U.S. citizens

HONOLULU — President Obama expressed misgivings about several provisions of a sweeping defense bill he signed into law on Saturday, pledging that his administration will use broad discretion in interpreting the measure’s legal requirements to ensure that U.S. citizens suspected of terrorism are not detained indefinitely by the military.
The $662 billion National Defense Authorization Act provides funding for 2012 at $27 billion less than Obama's request and $43 billion less than Congress authorized in 2011.



Gallery

 President Obama and his family are spending the end-of-year holidays in Hawaii.


Gallery





The bill also contains several detainee provisions that civil liberties groups and human rights advocates have strongly opposed, arguing that they would allow the military greater authority to detain and interrogate U.S. citizens and non-citizens and deny them legal rights protected by the Constitution.
Obama initially had threatened to veto the legislation. In a signing statement released by the White House on Saturday, Obama said he still does not agree with everything contained in the legislation. But with military funding due to expire Monday, Obama said he signed the bill after Congress made last-minute revisions at the request of the White House before approving it two weeks ago.
In several cases, the president called those changes “minimally acceptable” and vowed to use discretion when applying the provisions.
“I have signed this bill despite having serious reservations with certain provisions that regulate the detention, interrogation, and prosecution of suspected terrorists,” Obama said. “I want to clarify that my Administration will not authorize the indefinite military detention without trial of American citizens. Indeed, I believe that doing so would break with our most important traditions and values as a Nation.”
The president said his administration would seek to repeal any provisions that are inconsistent with his values and added that he would “reject any approach that would mandate military custody where law enforcement provides the best method of incapacitating a terrorist threat.”
Supporters of the legislation have said it codifies current arrangements such as the indefinite detention of terrorism suspects housed at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) defended the detainee provisions as being carefully worded in a way that allows the president flexibility and waiver authority.
Human rights advocates, however, described the measure as an expansion and enshrinement of military authority and compared it to the 1950s, when Sen. Joseph McCarthy used demagogic and disputed tactics in an attempt to root out Communist activities.
“By signing this defense spending bill, President Obama will go down in history as the president who enshrined indefinite detention without trial in U.S. law,” Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, said after Congress approved the bill.
The defense bill also contains a measure that would apply sanctions against the Central Bank of Iran in an effort to pressure Tehran to abandon its nuclear weapons program and would freeze $700 million in U.S. aid to Pakistan.
The Obama administration had expressed concerns about the Iran sanctions, which the White House feared could backfire and limit its ability to persuade other countries to join the United States in multilateral sanctions by forcing Iran to drive up oil prices.
Congress revised the bill to give the administration six months to apply the sanctions if the White House determines they could disrupt the oil markets.

[offemyJuccete]

Max Keiser@maxkeiser
Thanks Obama, by signing 'Indefinite Detention' I now know what if feels like to get ass raped by a black guy. ...

[Tusethede]

Did anyone have even a SHRED of doubt that he'd whip out the pen so fast to sign it that ink would spray across the desk?

[drmarshallusa]

Call it what it is, a suspension of Habeas Corpus!

Now Obama has joined the ranks of Lincoln and Bush 43. Mixed company perhaps, but still representative of something outside of the Constitution!

[Wetekemieluth]

Keep your 'legal rights' the fuck away from me.

[esdfsdflast]

YOU LIE!

Remember that line during the Obama speech. Later, the one who allowed his thoughts to slip out his mouth apologized. It was like the devil came up to him and threatened his life if he did not apologize.

Well, we have Obama's assurance of things. Sure we do. He is a bastard liar.

[Pheddytrourry]

He signs a piece of legislation that screwed up and his remedy to that is to sign ever more legislation.

Now you see why it NEVER gets better.

[mymnduccete]

must enlarge:

[flopay]

How much more does he have to do to prove himself as a biblical anti-Christ figure?
Drop a few nuclear bombs on innocent cities somewhere?

Am I missing something or is that headline a lie? With a semi-colon it would merely be deceptive.
I thought Obama signed defense bill that removes legal rights of any U.S. citizen.

People need to wake up and make more peace.

[AsmViktor]

How much more does he have to do to prove himself as a biblical anti-Christ figure?
Drop a few nuclear bombs on innocent cities somewhere?

Am I missing something or is that headline a lie? With a semi-colon it would merely be deceptive.
I thought Obama signed defense bill that removes legal rights of any U.S. citizen.

I would have said that he is just another small-minded criminal puppet doing the bidding of someone else, but the absolute lunacy associated with this persona is just beyond coincidence. Who were his parents? Where was this illegal alien kept? Who are his masters? How did he get all the scumbags into office? How has he made it this far without being removed?

Yeup- surely there is something supernatural happening here.

[jurnalkduo]

Newspeak. Signs away rights and at the same time pledges to maintain them... Now, anyone who holds an opinion that is uncomfortable for the powers, could be indefinetely detained and tortured if not murdered, without any legal recourse...

People will disappear!

[JRixlcvF]

HuffPo headline today:

HAPPY NEW YEAR: YOU CAN NOW BE DETAINED INDEFINITELY

[alicewong]

Obama is a duplicitous lying miscreant. He demanded that the provision for indefinite detention without trial encompass American citizens. The Senate acquiesced and added the language to the bill. Then he declared that he was opposed to said provision. Now he signs this unconstitutional provision into law, saying "don't worry, I won't use it." The man is a liar and his word is dirt. What a total disgrace to the office. If the American people don't elect Ron Paul to the presidency then it's over for this republic, over.

[Vobomei]

http://www.facebook.com/reelectpresidentobama2012

let them know how you feel.

[nryFBa9i]

WTF?

RT: PETA bugged over bestiality in the military
Published: 07 December, 2011
Did Congress vote last week to indefinitely detain Americans and hold them without charge in military prisons? Absolutely! But don’t worry; the passing of the National Defense Authorization Act didn’t kill all of your freedoms.

In fact, should President Obama sign the legislation into law, Americans in the armed forces will be allowed a few new rights worth celebrating. Just, please — however you chose to consecrate the Act, keep it to yourself.

While text in the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012 did indeed give the US military the power to — as Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) put it — turn America into a “battlefield,” for the men and women serving the United States, they will be able to, under the legislation, engage in both sodomy and bestiality, legally, while protecting America.

Don’t let lawmakers let you think the terrorists have won. American soldiers can have sex with animals now.
Finally.

The 97-to-3 vote in the Senate last week is causing a few new controversial legislations, but somehow under the radar of many was text that repealed article 125 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. And what does that say? Let’s take a gander:

(a) Any person subject to this chapter who engages in unnatural carnal copulation with another person of the same or opposite sex or with an animal is guilty of sodomy. Penetration, however slight, is sufficient to complete the offense.

(b) Any person found guilty of sodomy shall be punished as a court-martial may direct.

Now repealed, the military cannot find those that commit those acts guilty of any crime. Now all sorts of sex (anal sex, gay sex, oral sex, rooster sex, et cetera) are fine and dandy.

Apparently Uncle Sam is a lot more understanding of your sexual preferences than you thought...

In typical PETA fashion, the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals have since gone after the White House for not taking the matter seriously.

“Our office has been flooded with calls from Americans who are upset that this ban has been repealed — and for good reason,” they say in an official statement. “As we outlined in the attached letter sent yesterday to the secretary of defense, animal abuse does not affect animals only — it is also a matter of public safety, as people who abuse animals very often go on to abuse human beings.”

When the Act went before the Republican-dominated House of Representatives earlier this year, the amendment asking for the appeal of the sex law was absent. Only under a revision from the Democrat-controlled Senate did the legalese get snuck in.

[drugimpotence]

I think its over regardless of whether RP wins or not. If that ain't the final warning to prepare for the worst, I don't know what is..........

[WaicurtaitfuT]

It's not newspeak, it's just the fed gov re-defining the Rights they've bestowed upon their creation. As commander in chief of the entity that created that status, he gets to decide who gets civil Rights and who doesn't by whether or not he decides they are an enemy of the State.

This really shouldn't be a surprise to anyone. It's just a clarifying of what they can do to their creation and how it's decided.

It isn't civil rights any longer, it's civil privileges, for the commander in chief to give and take as he pleases.

[barsikjal]

civil "Rights" are privileges. Always have been. Only reason they haven't done this before now, is because they couldn't come up with a good enough reason that enough of the peeps would swallow.

Sure, even more probable is that they didn't need it until now...

[Lymnempomma]

Pre-Internet they were able to marginalize dissenters to the point they could rule as they wanted more or less, with the aid of tv-programming, drugs, education. Internet has allowed a critical mass of people to see through their veil, thus they need this now.

[Zdmlscid]

Naomi Wolf thinks that the congress people who voted for this bill will become its victims. Here:

http://naomiwolf.org/2011/12/how-con...n-arrest-bill/

Consistent with my 'sig' line


Hatha