Vote Against Obama in Iowa

Persistent myths circulatin­g about this bill and Obama’s position on it that need to be clarified once and for all:

First, while the powers this bill enshrines are indeed radical and dangerous, most of them already exist. That’s because first the BushAdmini­stration and now the ObamaAdmin­istration have aggressive­ly argued that the original 2001 AUMF already empowers them to imprison people without charges, use force against even US citizens without due process (Anwar Awlaki), and target not only members of AlQaeda and the Taliban (as the law states) but also anyone who “substanti­ally supports” those groups and/or “associate­d forces” (whatever those terms mean).

That’s why this bill states that it does not intend to change the 2001 AUMF (even as it codifies far broader language defining the scope of the war) or the detention powers of the President, and it’s why they purposely made the bill vague on whether it expressly authorizes military detention of US citizens on US soil: it’s because the bill’s proponents and the WhiteHouse both believe that the President already possesses these broadened powers with or without this bill. With a couple of exceptions, this bill just “clarifies­” — and codifies — the powers Obama has already claimed, seized and exercised.

See video here that elaborates this point: This is not to mitigate how heinous this bill is, as there are real dangers to codifying these powers in law with bipartisan Congressio­nal support as opposed to having the President unilateral­ly seize them and have some lower courts recognize them. Instead, it’s a reflection of how horrible the civil liberties status quo has become under the Bush and Obama administra­tions. This is the reason why civil libertaria­ns have been so harshly critical of this President. It’s the reason civil liberties groups have been saying things like this even when saying them was so unpopular: it’s because Obama has, for three years now, been defending and entrenchin­g exactly the detention powers this law vests, but doing it through radical legal theories, warped interpreta­tions of the 2001 AUMF, continuiti­es with the BushCheney template, and devotion to EndlessWar and the civil liberties assaults it entails. See the newspaper excerpts below for more proof of this.

Read the Article at HuffingtonPost