National Defense Authorization Act, makes us a martial-law state?

[midnight]

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/24/us/politics/24detainee.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss


Andrea J. Prasow of Human Rights Watch called that provision an “outrageous” undermining of prosecutorial discretion, adding that “mandatory military detention is what martial-law states do, not democracies.”

The measure would affect detainee issues in other ways:

¶ Making permanent a restriction against using military funds to build a prison inside the United States to house Guantánamo detainees.

¶ Allowing defendants in military commissions to plead guilty in capital cases.

¶ Codifying in federal statute a parole-board-like system of annual reviews for detainees that President Obama established by executive order this year.

¶ Making permanent a steep set of conditions, previously imposed by Congress as a temporary measure, that must be met before a Guantánamo detainee may be transferred to another country, but also authorizing the secretary of defense to make exceptions to the rules in certain cases.

¶ Declaring that the existing authorization to use military force against the perpetrators of the Sept. 11 attacks includes the power to detain members of Al Qaeda, the Taliban and associated forces.

The provision defining who can be detained is less sweeping than a similar provision in the House version of the bill. Critics have said that version as amounting to a new authorization of open-ended war severed of any connection to the Sept. 11 attacks.

Instead of creating jobs, and straightening out the terrorism of consumers in this country via the banks, we get a more jazzed up patriot act...