Martial Law in the USA, Gitmo-style

Levin, McCain, and the sharpie that redacted habeas corpus

Maybe this belong on Tinfoil Tuesday, but I better post it now before my email addy gets submitted to the Obama campaign and I win all-expense vacay to sunny Gitmo.

So, a year before 2012 elections, a few months after Dems were “joking” about canceling Congressional elections, and just when Obama is saying he didn’t know how bad things were and therefore he needs more time to fix everything, Senate passes a law that legalizes locking up American citizens on US Soil indefinitely.

How bad is it? According to Greenwald, this is what it does:

(1) mandates that all accused Terrorists be indefinitely imprisoned by the military rather than in the civilian court system; it also unquestionably permits (but does not mandate) that even U.S. citizens on U.S. soil accused of Terrorism be held by the military rather than charged in the civilian court system (Sec. 1032);

(2) renews the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF) with more expansive language: to allow force (and military detention) against not only those who perpetrated the 9/11 attacks and countries which harbored them, but also anyone who “substantially supports” Al Qaeda, the Taliban or “associated forces” (Sec. 1031); and,

(3) imposes new restrictions on the U.S. Government’s ability to transfer detainees out of Guantanamo (Secs. 1033-35).

So, if you are accused of being a terrorist, supporting a terrorist, or looking like a terrorist, the military is required to lock you up. Indefinitely. And if they happen to throw you in Gitmo, good luck getting even a sympathetic congress critter to get you out.

And as anyone who has been through airport security recently knows, the TSA has shown us who these suspected American terrorists are – 80 year old grannies in walkers, six year old kids, and anyone in between.

This is a law so bad that all the people who really fight terrorism are against it:

In fact, the heads of several security agencies, including the FBI, CIA, the director of national intelligence and the attorney general objected to the legislation. The Pentagon also said it was against the bill.

So why did it pass? It is typical of the party in power to keep grabbing more power, but what explains the GOP support? Are they just automatically hawkish beyond all common sense? Is it true that Darth Cheney lobbied for it? And will they let me tweet from my Gitmo cell?