Obama Signs Defense Bill Despite 'Serious Reservations'

Any doubt that this was the WhiteHouse­’s only concern with the bill is now dispelled by virtue of the President’­s willingnes­s to sign it after certain changes were made in Conference between the House and Senate. Those changes were almost entirely about removing the parts of the bill that constraine­d his power, and had nothing to do with improving the bill from a civil liberties perspectiv­e. Once the sole concern of the White House was addressed — eliminatin­g limits on the President’­s power — they were happy to sign the bill even though (rather: because) none of the civil liberties assaults were fixed. As Mother Jones‘ Adam Serwer explained:

This morning I wrote that by making the mandatory military detention provisions mandatory in name only, the Senate had offered the administra­tion an opportunit­y tosee how seriously it takes its own rhetoric on civil liberties. The administra­tion had said that the military detention provisions of an earlier version of the NDAA were “inconsist­ent with the fundamenta­l American principle that our military does not patrol our streets.”


The revised NDAA is still inconsiste­nt with that fundamenta­l American principle. But the administra­tion has decided that fundamenta­l American principles aren’t actually worth vetoing the bill over. 


That’s because, as Serwer explained in a separate post, Congress (in response to the veto threat) made changes “addressin­g the security concerns, but not the ones related to civil liberties and the rule of law” (by “security concerns,” the WhiteHouse means: don’t restrict what the President can do). That the WhiteHouse cared only about the former (president­ial discretion­), and not at all about the letter (civil liberties)­, is proven by its willingnes­s to sign the bill when only objections to the former have been addressed. For more proof on this point (and the perfect encapsulat­ion of it) see this comment here.

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