Congress Said Set to Eviscerate Bill of Rights Protections

The web site of the American Civil Liberties Union is reporting that the Senate is expected to pass a bill attempting to allow the government to detain citizens in prison indefinitely in spite of Constitutional protections. Here is a portion of the ACLU statement:

Our government must not enshrine permanently into law the power to militarily detain people indefinitely without charge or trial. Tell the president to listen to the American people and veto any bill that contains indefinite detention. If the president fails to veto the bill, ask him to publicly commit to limiting his use of this authority to actual battlefields only. The whole world is not a battlefield and the president should make that clear.

This is very good, but can be put more simply -- and more accurately. The Constitution is the supreme law of the land and anything which contravenes the Constitution is simply not law. We all know Washington loves to make things complicated. Sometimes laws do need to be written in a most comprehensive way. But the Bill of Rights was added to the Constitution to rule out the kinds of abuses which England had practiced in the recent Revolutionary War, including indefinite detentions. There is no need to lose sight of our heritage and our American values. Any diminishing of our rights diminishes America. It is now an old story: "terrorism" can and must be fought without changing the very fabric of the country. If that happens the terrorists (whoever they may be) will have already won.


More here:
http://www.aclu.org/blog/content/president-obama-should-listen-american-people-not-his-advisors-ndaa