Opponents of a U.S. law they claim may subject them to indefinite military detention for activities including news reporting and political activism persuaded a federal judge to temporarily block the measure.

U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest in Manhattan yesterday ruled in favor of a group of writers and activists who sued President Barack Obama, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and the Defense Department, claiming a provision of the National Defense Authorization Act, signed into law Dec. 31, puts them in fear that they could be arrested and held by U.S. armed forces.

The complaint was filed Jan. 13 by a group including former New York Times reporter Christopher Hedges. The plaintiffs contend a section of the law allows for detention of citizens and permanent residents taken into custody in the U.S. on “suspicion of providing substantial support” to people engaged in hostilities against the U.S., such as al-Qaeda.

“The statute at issue places the public at undue risk of having their speech chilled for the purported protection from al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and ‘associated forces’ – i.e., ‘foreign terrorist organizations,’” Forrest said in an opinion yesterday. “The vagueness of Section 1021 does not allow the average citizen, or even the government itself, to understand with the type of definiteness to which our citizens are entitled, or what conduct comes within its scope.”

CONTINUED at Bloomberg.

Fort Leonard Wood Public Affairs director Tiffany Wood has provided the first official response to the shocking U.S. Army document that outlines the implementation of re-education camps, admitting that the manual was “not intended for public release” and claiming that its provisions only apply outside the United States, a contention completely disproved by the language contained in the document itself.

Source: Prison Planet.

Document also describes forced labor.

A shocking U.S. Army manual that describes how “political activists,” including American citizens, are to be indoctrinated in re-education camps also includes rules on forced labor and separating political prisoners by confining them in isolation.

Aside from detailing how PSYOP teams will use “indoctrination programs to reduce or remove antagonistic attitudes,” as well as targeting “political activists” with indoctrination programs to provide “understanding and appreciation of U.S. policies and actions,” the manual directs political prisoners to be separated from the rest of the camp population.

On page 284, the manual (PDF) describes how “Malcontents, rabble-rousers, trained agitators, and political officers who may attempt to organize resistance or create disturbances within the I/R facility,” are to be confined “in isolated enclosures to deny them access to the general population.”

CONTINUED at Prison Planet. Written by Paul Joseph Watson.

It is ironic but perhaps sadly appropriate that Attorney General Eric Holder would choose a law school, Northwestern University, to deliver a speech earlier this month in which he demolished what was left of the rule of law in America.

In what history likely will record as a turning point, Attorney General Holder bluntly explained that this administration believes it has the authority to use lethal force against Americans if the President determines them to be a threat to the nation. He tells us that this is not a violation of the due process requirements of our Constitution because the President himself embodies “due process” as he unilaterally determines who is to be targeted. As Holder said, “a careful and thorough executive branch review of the facts in a case amounts to ‘due process.’” That means that the administration believes it is the President himself who is to be the judge, jury, and executioner.

As George Washington University Law Professor Jonathan Turley wrote of the Holder speech:

“All the Administration has said is that they closely and faithfully follow their own guidelines — even if their decisions are not subject to judicial review. The fact that they say those guidelines are based on notions of due process is meaningless. They are not a constitutional process of review.”

It is particularly bizarre to hear the logic of the administration claiming the right to target its citizens according to some secret selection process, when we justified our attacks against Iraq and Libya because their leaders supposedly were targeting their own citizens! We also now plan a covert war against Syria for the same reason.

I should make it perfectly clear that I believe any individual who is engaging in violence against this country or its citizens should be brought to justice. But as Attorney General Holder himself points out in the same speech, our civilian courts have a very good track record of trying and convicting individuals involved with terrorism against the United States. Our civilian court system, with the guarantee of real due process, judicial review, and a fair trial, is our strength, not a weakness. It is not an impediment to be sidestepped in the push for convictions or assassinations, but rather a process that guarantees that fundamental right to be considered innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.

I am encouraged, however that there appears to be the beginning of a backlash against the administration’s authoritarian claims. Just recently I did an interview with conservative radio talk show host Laura Ingraham who expressed grave concern over using these sorts of tactics against Americans using the supposed war on terror as justification. Sadly, many conservative leaders were silent when Republican President George W. Bush laid the groundwork for this administration’s lawlessness with the PATRIOT Act, warrantless wiretapping, indefinite detention without trial, and other violations. Similarly, as Professor Turley points out, “Democrats previously demanded the ‘torture memos’ of the Bush administration that revealed poor legal analysis by Judge Jay Bybee and Professor John Yoo to justify torture. Now, however, Democrats are largely silent in the face of a president claiming the right to unilaterally kill citizens.” The misuse of and disregard for our Constitution for partisan political gain is likely one reason the American public holds Congress in such low esteem. Now the stakes are much higher. Congress and the people should finally wake up!

Read more Ron Paul articles at his Congressional website.

*Written by Rob Rimes.

Unlike Rick Santorum, I love gay people. Hell, I have a lot of gay friends. In fact, I get pretty perturbed when someone attacks them just for being themselves. You see, despite all the dramatic and bigoted bullshit, most gay people are very forgiving with the hateful rhetoric, as they can see the forest for the trees and recognize a hate-mongering piece of shit for what it is. They can take the heat and have for decades, if not centuries and I respect that. A punk ass bitch like Santorum, well, he can’t handle any sort of heat because he is a soggy-bottomed thin-skinned piss midget that bitches, whines and cries when things don’t go his way. Well this is one of those times when that shit pigeon is going to have to sniffle like the sensitive little Tina that he is because I’m not going to be all that kind to him or to the fucking morons who casted votes in his favor. I mean seriously people, if you voted for Rick Santorum, I don’t care who you are, you are a goddamned scumbag and lower than a piece of dried up shit smeared across the belly of a cockroach crawling through a grease trap! There is a special place in Hell for all of you but realistically, Hell probably doesn’t exist so you’re going to get a free pass most likely.

Getting back to Ricky Baby, I have to mention that the nasty Bible-fucking bastard followed up three big wins on Super Tuesday with some big wins in the Deep South. Truthfully, the people of that region just proved that they are as dumb as the rest of the country thinks that they are. We would all probably benefit from a great flood in that region. I mean, spare the children, the dogs and the house cats but please wipe the rest of these people off of the face of the Earth, especially if they have a Santorum sign in front of their podunk rusty trailer. The planet would be so much better if the rest of the world didn’t have to live their lives affected by the decisions of these moronic rednecks and evangelical fear turtles. Rick Santorum’s success is proof that Americans are a mad breed of people. No, not mad as in angry but mad as in insane and ravenous! Like starving hyenas eating their own faces off because the lions have continually beaten them to the kill. To be fair, not all Americans are insane but a very big portion of them are, simply because of the fact that this guy is riding high in second place in this ridiculous Republican primary.

Now, I’ve written about this closeted cock-smuggler before but I’ve refrained from revealing the real evil stuff. I mean, this pompous pontificating pansy has done some really weird and dark shit and fuck it, I refuse to pull punches at this point because the people deserve to see the layers peeled back on this guy. Sure, the media has mentioned these things before but not at a mainstream level, except where it was to bash one of their own for putting one of these stories out there. The reason why they don’t bring this up is pretty obvious. First, the media lies and only reports on what they feel will help shape their agenda. With that being said, CNN and MSNBC don’t want this stuff out there because they would rather have a weakling cockpuppet like Santorum go against their messiah – Barack Obama in November. Fox News doesn’t want this stuff out there because they believe that Rick Santorum is actually a viable candidate and they have to protect him going into November, that is if you even remotely entertain the idea that this douche can win – unfortunately, this is still possible and nothing would surprise me at this point. Truth is, the man is sick and twisted and so is the mainstream media who have been incredibly irresponsible in not covering these horrific tales.

The first of these insane true stories may make your skin crawl, as it had a very disturbing effect on mine. Now Fox News’ own Alan Colmes reported on this and received a ton of heat from it by his colleagues and then, as quickly as this news surfaced, it was buried and shelved away. What I am referring to is an incident where Rick Santorum’s child died shortly after birth and he and his wife felt it was necessary to bring their corpse of a newborn home to show their living children. On one hand, this sounds insane, on the other hand, many people may be pissed at the mere mention of this, as they probably believe that people should be able to grieve and raise their kids in their own way. I get that argument, I do, but considering that Rick Santorum sees it necessary for the government to be in our bedrooms and in our lives, why should any of us respect his family’s privacy? Sure, this may seem like I am taking the low road but the fact of the matter is that this did indeed happen and it should be known, as this guy is running for the highest office in the land and as bewildering as it is to me, he could magically win the election – and I only say this because somehow he has gotten this far. Now I understand that the loss of a child is horrific and I’m not trying to make fun of the Santorum family or downplay the situation but these actions are strange and a little unsettling, if you can’t see why, you may need a mental examination.

However, it gets even weirder. Karen Santorum came out and talked about this incident and while I feel horrible about their loss, the next reveal really put the cherry on top of this insane sundae. She admitted that after showing the deceased infant to their living children, that she and her husband slept with it! I’m sorry, while the grieving process is hard and the loss of a child is by far one of the hardest things anyone could ever go through, this is just morbid and disturbing on so many levels. The most disturbing thing however, is how this family has often times told the story of their deceased child and their other child who has severe health issues in an effort to drum up sympathy and compassion from the voting public. They certainly don’t parade around the fact that they brought their dead child home, showed it to their children and slept with it but they do pull on the sympathy strings by continually mentioning their dead son and their daughter who nearly died and has continually had life-threatening medical problems.

Rick Santorum’s strange kid stories don’t stop there. He served on the board of directors of Universal Health Services, Inc., which is a hospital chain that was plagued with dozens of allegations of abuse during Santorum’s time on the board. These allegations include rape, neglect, patient suicides over bad care as well as murder. While all of those ghastly things are revolting and unacceptable, nothing may be more disturbing than the fact that one of these hospitals performed an exorcism on a boy suffering from autism! Hell, here is what the Huffington Post had to say about it:

Over the years, states have barred children from attending UHS facilities over safety concerns and the feds have put UHS on their radar. Department of Justice lawyers have filed two lawsuits accusing the chain of fraudulent activities. One lawsuit settled for $27.5 million. Another suit still pending in federal court in Virginia centers on a facility called Keystone Marion Youth Center.

The facility, located in Marion, Va., is a residential treatment center for troubled boys with mental-health issues. The majority of patients come from states’ child-welfare and juvenile-justice systems. The center promises stability, schooling, and clinically-approved therapies. It was also approved to accept Medicaid patients.

It did not have approval to perform an “exorcism.”

But that is what appeared to be happening in an empty room at Marion in May 2007, according to a facility teacher who passed by the room, which was occupied by at least one nurse, a supervisor, a janitor and a boy with autism. Several in the room appeared to be hovering over the boy and praying, according to the teacher, who recounted the incident shortly after to Barbara Jones, the center’s director of education at the time.

The severity of the boy’s autism left him hardly able to speak and unable to walk on his own, Jones says.

“‘They were trying to exorcise him. That’s why he had the autism, he had a demon in him,’” Jones recounted what the teacher told her to The Huffington Post. “The cleaning lady was trying to cast out the demons.”

Santorum was one of the overseers of UHS when this happened. In fact, he’d still be there sitting high if he didn’t leave to focus on his campaign. Maybe this is an extreme example but with NDAA passed and the indefinite detention of American citizens now being a reality, who is to say that this self-righteous Jesus freak won’t round up those causing dissent in an attempt to exorcise them of their anti-Santorum “demons”. This article alone might make me a prime candidate for Mr. Santorum’s special brand of theocratic cleansing. The man is mad!

With UHS’s horrific track record, I’m sure that this isn’t just an isolated incident. Considering that children have been barred from their hospitals by those more competent than UHS’s medical staff, one has to wonder if every atrocity has made it to the light of day. I’m sure if one were to dig deeper, they would find much more. Besides, you can’t tell me that Rick Santorum wasn’t aware of all of this? Why hasn’t he come forward and condemned it? Is it because he sees nothing wrong with the actions of this vile institution that he helped manage at the highest level? Is he hoping that this story won’t see the light of day? Well, the conservative media won’t run it and maybe the liberal media is just holding off on pushing this story until the time comes for them to use it more effectively – like if Ricky Baby were to actually win the nomination.

In every sense of the word, the man is sick and if you are in denial about that, you are probably just as big of a wicked bastard. I don’t feel bad about sharing this, as he has no qualms about making our privacy transparent and outlawing certain activities that many of us do in our own homes behind closed doors. When he points the finger at everyone that doesn’t share his arcane beliefs and says that he intends to force us into his box, well it’s only fair for those of us he’s speaking to to point back at him and let him know that he’s a sick fuck in his own way and he is not holier than thou. Besides, he is running for office and under a microscope – that was his choice by choosing to ride this train. Think what you will about any of this. Sure, I interjected my opinion throughout this piece but the fact that many will find it offensive, either because of Santorum’s actions or because of my reveal on things in his personal life, has proven that it is relevant and that it is necessary to see the light of day, even though you can argue against that point until you are blue in the face. The fact is, the American public has a right to know all of this and to think otherwise is ignorant and careless.

The point is, this man must not be allowed to get the Republican nomination and certainly not the chair in the Oval Office. Mitt Romney and Barack Obama are both bastards in their own right but Rick Santorum is a Bible-carrying beast that wants to breed a culture of big government religio-fascism the likes of which we’ve never seen before in this country. The blood is on all of our hands if he succeeds.

‘Council of Governors’ member McDonnell could try to sabotage anti-NDAA law.

The Virginia Senate has passed a law that forbids authorities in the state from using the ‘indefinite detention’ provisions of the National Defense Authorization Act against Americans, but whether or not Governor Bob McDonnell will sign it remains to be seen given the fact that he is a member of Barack Obama’s infamous ‘Council of Governors’, whose role it is to increase military involvement in domestic affairs.

“Today, the Virginia State Senate nearly unanimously passed my bill, HB 1160, to prevent Virginia’s state and local government agencies from cooperating with the federal government in the indefinite detention of Virginians under the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012 (“NDAA”). I am grateful that the vote in the Senate to accede to the bill as passed by the House of Delegates was 37-1,” said a statement by Delegate Bob Marshall, who was the driving force behind the bill.

“Congress, by including this provision in a must pass bill affecting our Armed Forces, made a terrible mistake in empowering this or any future President and the military to arrest and detain American citizens indefinitely, without charges, without the chance to confront their accusers, without legal counsel, and without a trial.”

Having already passed the Virginia House by a vote of 96-4 last month, the final bill will be sent to Governor Bob McDonnell. However, McDonnell has already attempted to sabotage the legislation using “secretive, backdoor” tactics, according to Marshall, so whether he agrees to sign the bill without trying to weaken its language remains to be seen.

The fact that McDonnell was included on President Obama’s infamous ‘Council of Governors’ probably explains why he has been so reticent to support the bill.

The executive order which established the Council of Governors (PDF), created a body of ten state governors directly appointed by Obama to work with the federal government to help advance the “synchronization and integration of State and Federal military activities in the United States”.

CONTINUED at Prison Planet. Written by Paul Joseph Watson.

Today, the Virginia Senate took a firm stand in support of liberty, the Constitution for the United States, and the Constitution of Virginia by voting in favor of House Bill 1160 (HB1160), the “NDAA Nullification Act.”

The final vote was 39-1.

After a motion to recommit (delay until next year) went down to the wire before being rejected yesterday (report here), groups across the political spectrum activated in support of the legislation, which codifies in law that no agency of the Commonwealth of Virginia – including defense forces and national guard troops, will comply with or assist the federal government in any way under it’s newly claimed powers to arrest and detain without due process.

INTERNMENT: NEVER AGAIN

The bill’s primary sponsor, Delegate Bob Marshall, had this to say in support:

“During World War II, the federal government incarcerated tens of thousands of loyal Japanese Americans in the name of national security. By this bill, Virginia declares that it will not participate in similar modern-day efforts.

Even President Obama had questions about the bill, when he promised the American people that he would not use the unrestrained powers it granted him — but why should we trust any President with such powers?

There are moments in our history when our liberties hang in the balance. This is one of those moments. I urge the Senate…to lead the way in the nation to ensure that Virginia will not cooperate when the Federal Government strays off the reservation with laws that take away the civil liberties of our citizens.”

CONTINUED at the Tenth Amendment Center.

Latest state to revolt against kidnapping provisions of NDAA.

Utah has become the latest state to revolt against the indefinite detention provision of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), introducing a resolution urging Congress to repeal the law that allows Americans to be incarcerated without trial.

Following in the footsteps of Virginia, which earlier this month passed a House bill that codifies noncompliance with the “kidnapping provisions” of section 1021 and 1022 of the NDAA, the resolution “expresses disapproval” of the same provisions, noting that they serve to “violate a right guaranteed by the United States Constitution and the Utah Constitution.”

“Be it further resolved that the Legislature of the State of Utah, the Governor concurring therein, urges the United States Congress to repeal or clarify Sections 1021 and 1022 of the 2012 NDAA to protect the rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution and Utah Constitution,” states the resolution (PDF).

The NDAA bill, which was signed into law by President Obama under the radar on New Years Eve while he was on vacation in Kailua, hands the government power to “allow the military to indefinitely detain terror suspects, including American citizens arrested in the United States, without charge.”

Republican Senator Todd Weiler, the chief sponsor of the resolution, fears the indefinite detention provisions of the bill could be used against American citizens just as the Patriot Act has been used against non-terrorists, telling the Salt Lake Tribune, “I have a legitimate fear this National Defense Authorization law will do the same thing.”

Emphasizing how opposition to the indefinite detention provisions of the NDAA crosses partisan lines, both the American Civil Liberties Union and the conservative Utah Eagle Forum expressed their support for the resolution.

CONTINUED at Prison Planet. Written by Paul Joseph Watson.

Washington lawmakers latest to join chorus of opposition to bill allowing for indefinite detention of U.S. citizens.

Five Washington state representatives have introduced legislation in an attempt to override provisions the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) of 2012 that would allow for the indefinite detention of American citizens without trial.

Reps. Jason Overstreet, Matt Shea, Vincent Buys, Cary Condotta, and David Taylor introduced HB 2759, the Washington State Preservation of Liberty Act this week.

The legislation slams a provision in the NDAA that allows the U.S. government and the military to “indefinitely detain United States citizens and lawful resident aliens captured within the United States of America without charge until the end of hostilities.”

The controversial legislation, signed into law by Obama on New Years Eve, allows American citizens to be abducted and held in a detention camp anywhere in the world without trial under section 1031.

As reported by the Tenth Amendment Center, the Washington State Preservation of Liberty Act forbids “any state employee, member of the Washington National Guard or any agent of a corporation doing business with the state” to cooperate in the federal detainment or investigation of a U.S. citizen or resident alien.

It also prohibits any state involvement “with an investigation or detainment of a United States citizen or lawful resident alien located within the United States of America by the armed forces of the United States of America.”

The bill puts forth the case that the NDAA is blatantly unconstitutional and legislates for the indefinite detention of U.S. citizens without due process.

The Bill states:

It is indisputable that the threat of terrorism is real, and that the full force of appropriate, and constitutional, law must be used to defeat this threat. However, winning the war against terror cannot come at the great expense of eviscerating the unalienable rights recognized by and protected in the United States Constitution and the Constitution of the state of Washington. Indeed, undermining those constitutional rights serves only to concede to the terrorists’ demands of changing the fabric of what has made the United States of America a republic granting the greatest number of people the greatest amount of liberty, justice, security, opportunity, prosperity, happiness, peace, and good ever known or experienced by humankind throughout the history of the world.

“By taking a stand, Washington can join those heroic state officials who stood up against federal power to protect black citizens in the waning years of slavery.” Michael Maharrey, Communications Director for the Tenth Amendment Center said.

Several other states, including Virginia and Tennessee are also considering legislation to nullify the NDAA provision.

As we have previously noted, although President Obama indicated in a signing statement attached to the bill that he would not use it to indefinitely detain American citizens without trial, it was the Obama administration itself which requested that the provision be worded so it would apply to US citizens.

As the bill’s co-sponsor Senator Carl Levin said during a speech on the floor in December, it was the Obama administration that demanded the removal of language that would have precluded Americans from being subject to indefinite detention.

“The language which precluded the application of Section 1031 to American citizens was in the bill that we originally approved…and the administration asked us to remove the language which says that U.S. citizens and lawful residents would not be subject to this section,” said Levin, Chairman of the Armed Services Committee.

The Tenth Amendment Center has Model Legislation to nullify NDAA available here – we urge readers to contact their state legislators to ask that they introduce this legislation today.

——————————————————————

Steve Watson is the London based writer and editor for Alex Jones’ Infowars.net, andPrisonplanet.com. He has a Masters Degree in International Relations from the School of Politics at The University of Nottingham in England.

Source: Prison Planet.

Critics say it proves Senator wasn’t being detained

Security video of Kentucky Senator Rand Paul’s run in with the TSA earlier this week has been leaked to a newspaper, and critics say it proves that Paul was not detained by the federal agency.

The footage, obtained by The Tennessean shows the Senator seated in a chair within a glass walled cubicle in the security area of Nashville airport after refusing to undergo a pat down.

As Paul talks on the phone, presumably to his office as he had stated in interviews, three TSA officials stand guard, along with police officers standing outside the cubicle.

The video then shows Paul later being escorted through the airport by an official. The footage represents about one minute of the incident which Paul said lasted over an hour.

The Senator is partially obscured by a column blocking part of the cubicle for some portions of the video. When asked why the camera would be set up only to be obscured by a column, airport spokeswoman Emily Richard told The Tennessean that cameras are “placed for the widest view possible, not a specific area.”

The airport authority and the TSA have declined to comment on the footage.

Watch the video below:

Although the report in The Tennessean points out that the footage contradicts a police report that claimed Paul was “irate”, critics jumped on the footage to suggest Paul over reacted and exaggerated the incident.

Max Read of blog site Gawker said he believes the video proves the Republican was “totally full of sh-t” when he called his spokesperson.

“I got a lot of mail, some of it syntactically and orthographically correct, disputing my account of Rand Paul’s full-of-sh-tness by referring to the dictionary definition of the word ‘detained.’” Read wrote.

“Here is my feeling: when your argument centers around ‘the dictionary definition’ of anything and involves the adverb ‘technically,’ you are full of sh-t. When you tell someone you are being ‘detained by the TSA,’ you don’t mean ‘sitting in a chair while they decide what to do.’”

Another blogger suggested that “the way Paul was treated (not a finger laid on him) doesn’t quite illustrate the harshness that word [detainment'] usually suggests.”

In response Paul supporters pointed out that just because Paul wasn’t shackled and pushed around doesn’t mean he wasn’t being detained by the TSA.

“‘Detained’ is a legal term that very much applies to this situation. It does not matter that he is not in handcuffs or behind bars; when a peace officer restricts your freedom to vacate an area through verbal instruction (the consequence of disobedience being immediate arrest for disorderly conduct), you are detained.” one commenter noted.

Following the incident Monday, Rand Paul told reporters “I tried to leave the cubicle to speak to one of the TSA people and I was barked at: ‘Do not leave the cubicle! So, that, to me sounds like I’m being asked not to leave the cubicle. It sounds a little bit like I’m being detained.”

——————————————————————

Steve Watson is the London based writer and editor for Alex Jones’ Infowars.net, andPrisonplanet.com. He has a Masters Degree in International Relations from the School of Politics at The University of Nottingham in England.

Source: Prison Planet.