Defense from NDAA starts in Columbia

James Madison said,”Perhaps it is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad”.  [Letter from Madison to Jefferson, May 13, 1798]

On December 15^th, 2011, the 220^th anniversary of the Bill of Rights, the Senate passed the Fiscal Year 2012 National Defense Authorization Act’s Conference Report.  Commonly known as the NDAA.

The day before, the Tea Party House voted 283 – 136 to pass the NDAA.

NDAA authority is not unique to Obama, it was just codified by Congress under him.

Bush claimed the same authority, even without the color of law.  He had U.S. Citizen Jose Padilla held for 3.5 years without charge and without the opportunity to defend himself.

The charges were dropped and he was eventually transferred to civilian prison on charges unrelated to his original arrest charge.

Jose Padilla was eventually found guilty on conspiracy charges that have been described as “a plan to one day get together to plan a criminal activity” and sentenced to 17 years and 4 months in prison.  He is appealing.

Now, by statue the President has the ability to instruct the military to arrest anyone who he decides “was part of or substantially supported al-Qaida, the Taliban, or associated forces” and hold him indefinitely, without trial, without the ability to defend himself and prove his innocence.

But of course, we know that the government never makes mistakes.

Only really bad people will be arrested under this new statue, right?

An innocent is never arrested and wrongly held.

So, anyone the President feels is a potential threat shouldn’t be allowed to defend themselves, right?

But even worse, this unconstitutional and therefore illegal statute never even defines what it means to be “part of”,  or to give “substantial support”, or to be “associated forces” of a terrorist group.

Many of you will remember a memo that was released from a Missouri fusion center in 2009 that became known as the MIAC report.  This was a report from the Missouri Information Analysis Center that was issued under the names of the Governor, the Director of Public Safety, the Colonel in charge of the Missouri State Highway Patrol, and the director of MIAC.

It identified these as signs of a potential terrorist:

• associattion with third political parties;
• display of anti-abortion material;
•  symbols that include the Gadsden “Don’t tread on me” flag;
• a Campaign for Liberty bumper sticker;
• anything that opposes the UN (Agenda 21);
• anti-immigration;

… is anyone left here who I haven’t tagged as a potential terrorist?

And if you are unlucky enough to be arrested under this authority codified by the NDAA, you will never have the opportunity to prove otherwise.

Our forefathers fought against the king of England because they didn’t want any government official to have the authority to lock you up without the responsibility to prove you are guilty before a jury of y our peers.

Our government was designed to be a system of the people and by the people and for the people.

Our government is supposed to answer to us.

South Carolina has a very conservative Congressional Delegation.  But, even if we had a 100% conservative delegation who always voted to protect our liberty, we still would have only 9 votes out of 535 in congress.

The fight to defend ourselves from this tyranny is not in Washington.

It is right here in Columbia!

Virginia is doing something about it. Virginia HB1160 would send a powerful message by preventing any employee or member of the military of Virginia from assisting an agency of the U.S. armed forces in investigating, prosecuting, or detaining a citizen of the U. S. in violation of the U.S. Constitution or the Constitution of Virginia.

Do you think our General Assembly has the guts to be so bold?

We have much work to do right here at home!

Our fight for liberty and freedom is here in our own statehouse.

There are 170 votes in our General Assembly, and our state controls all 170!

We won a great fight last year when we forced them to all vote on the record!  That gave us the  tools to expose how they vote.

But there is still much about our General Assembly that is cloaked under the veil of secrecy!

Patrick Henry, that great son of liberty, is quoted as saying, “The liberties of a people never were, nor ever will be, secure, when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them.”

Right here at home we have our own state legislature who exempts themselves from the Freedom of Information Act.

That’s right!  Every other level and agency of government in our state must disclose their e-mail, letters, memos, etc when requested.  Everyone, that is, except for our legislature.  They are exempt.

These documents are critical for exposing corruption, graft, and undue influence.  Without them, we will never have a state government that answers to the people who put them in office.

But our legislature has written the law so that they don’t have to turn over any of their documents when requested.  They are exempt!

That is why I’m asking you to support H3235.  It will remove the legislative exemption from the SC FOIA laws.

H3235.

Write it down!

Call your legislator and tell them to stop hiding their papers from public disclosure.

You can find your legislator and his contact information at this link.

Without due process; without freedom of speech; without true transparency and accountability we will never lay claim to the full blessings of liberty and freedom that our forefathers bled and died to protect.

We must start where we have the most influence!  That is right here at home in Columbia.

Our state House of Representatives must pass H3235 and put themselves under the same disclosure laws that the rest of state, county, and local governments operate under.

Call your House member today!