[lbo-talk] High crime

[Carl G. Estabrook]

Obama has signed the clearly unconstitutional Military Detention Bill  
(NDAA) - quietly, on New Year's Eve, while on vacation in Hawaii.  He  
and the congressional representatives who voted for it have violated  
their oath to uphold the Constitution. It's not too much to suggest  
that this bill resembles the Enabling Act of 23 March 1933.

"Will the bill hurt Obama? Probably not too much, if at all. Liberals  
are never very energetic in protecting constitutional rights. That’s  
more the province of libertarians and other wackos like Ron Paul   
actually prepared to draw lines in the sand in matters of  
principle" [Alex Cockburn].

"Think, if you can, of a single instance in which a plainly written  
provision of the Constitution has ever been denied. If by the mere  
force of numbers, a majority should deprive a minority of any clearly  
written constitutional right, it might, in a moral point of view,  
justify revolution - certainly would, if such right were a vital  
one" [Abraham Lincoln].

All the more so if a minority - 1% - should through its agents deprive  
the majority of a "clearly written constitutional right": the bill  
Obama signed today  is a direct assault on the First, Fourth, Fifth,  
Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth Amendments.

--CGE