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the_archfiendIn case you weren't paying attention (and chances are that you weren't), the US Senate went all 1975-era Indira Gandhi on us and decided to stick an indefinite detention provision in the National Defense Authorization Act that seems more than a bit, well, suspect if you don't relish the idea of a President - and I mean any President - having the automatic right to effectively suspend habeas corpus for seemingly any reason they deem necessary.
What's particularly bizarre about this is that Senators from both parties came down on the pro- and anti-detention sides of the argument: Mark Udall (D-Colorado) and the otherwise wingnutty Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) attempted to strip the provision from the bill via amendments, and both John McCain (R-Arizona) and Carl Levin (D-Michigan) voted against those amendments and for the final version of the Act that included the provision in question. Now, McCain I get; he's becoming more and more of a panderer to all sorts of teabagger/neocon dog whistles since he was unsuccessfully primaried in his last Senate race. But Levin? Seriously? Granted, he's quite hawkish on certain issues, but I fail to see where he switched identities with either Joe Lieberman or the corpse of Henry "Scoop" Jackson over the last election cycle.
All joking aside, this bill has more than a corpse-like whiff of constitutional rot to it; the provision might not make it past the House or the Supreme Court, but considering that either question turns on the watery ethical sense of a John Boehner or John Roberts, don't count on it.
What's particularly bizarre about this is that Senators from both parties came down on the pro- and anti-detention sides of the argument: Mark Udall (D-Colorado) and the otherwise wingnutty Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) attempted to strip the provision from the bill via amendments, and both John McCain (R-Arizona) and Carl Levin (D-Michigan) voted against those amendments and for the final version of the Act that included the provision in question. Now, McCain I get; he's becoming more and more of a panderer to all sorts of teabagger/neocon dog whistles since he was unsuccessfully primaried in his last Senate race. But Levin? Seriously? Granted, he's quite hawkish on certain issues, but I fail to see where he switched identities with either Joe Lieberman or the corpse of Henry "Scoop" Jackson over the last election cycle.
All joking aside, this bill has more than a corpse-like whiff of constitutional rot to it; the provision might not make it past the House or the Supreme Court, but considering that either question turns on the watery ethical sense of a John Boehner or John Roberts, don't count on it.
