Friday, June 08, 2012

Obama's NDAA struck down in court

Few Americans know what the NDAA is, which isn't too surprising, considering most Americans know almost nothing about anything. The NDAA is the National Defense Authorization Act, which allows the government to detain U.S. citizens indefinitely. Obama signed the NDAA into law on the telltale day of New Year's Eve -- one of the days when almost nobody pays attention to the news (this is why terrible legislation, like the NDAA and Obamacare, are carefully passed on major holidays).

Remember the media reaction to Bush signing the Patriot Act? The horror! When the NDAA became law, the liberal press had a very different reaction, even though the laws have some similar, and disturbing, elements. When a Republican president does something bad, the press makes sure everybody knows about it with front page coverage for months. When a Democratic president does something bad, they do a few paragraphs on page 16 and hope it goes away before anyone notices.

Today a federal judge suspended the NDAA. Surprisingly, the NYT covered a story that makes Obama look bad:
    The government may not rely on a disputed law enacted last year to hold people in indefinite military detention on suspicion that they “substantially supported” Al Qaeda or its allies — at least if they had no connection to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, a federal judge said on Wednesday.
The NDAA landed in court as a result of a suit filed by journalists.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

i disagree there has been plenty of press coverage about the dangers of the detention aspects of the bill.

ironic that there is a lot of conservative blogs and articles critical of obama for signing it when certainly republicans in the house overwhelmingly voted for it (194 yes to 43? no... dems 93 yes, to 94 no, i think).

The Shaved Ape said...

Here's the coverage at the No. 1 Democratic blog in America:

Daily KOS

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