U.S. asks appeals court to freeze military detention ruling
Source: Reuters
The U.S. government on Monday asked for an emergency stay of a federal judge's ruling against a section of a law that activists and journalists had said could permit their indefinite military detention.
The U.S. Justice Department said the ruling against a portion of the National Defense Authorization Act's "Homeland Battlefield" provisions would hurt America's ability to fight wars overseas.
The ruling was issued last week by Judge Katherine Forrest in favor of a group of activists and reporters who said they feared being detained under the law signed by President Barack Obama in December.
The provision authorizes indefinite military detention for people deemed to have "substantially supported" al Qaeda, the Taliban or "associated forces."
Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/09/17/us-usa-security-lawsuit-idUSBRE88G16M20120917
And for the rest of the story.
In January I sued President Barack Obama over Section 1021(b)(2) of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which authorized the military to detain U.S. citizens indefinitely, strip them of due process and hold them in military facilities, including offshore penal colonies. Last week, round one in the battle to strike down the onerous provision, one that saw me joined by six other plaintiffs including Noam Chomsky and Daniel Ellsberg, ended in an unqualified victory for the public. U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest, who accepted every one of our challenges to the law, made her temporary injunction of the section permanent. In short, she declared the law unconstitutional.
Almost immediately after Judge Forrest ruled, the Obama administration challenged the decision. Government prosecutors called the opinion “unprecedented” and said that “the government has compelling arguments that it should be reversed.” The government added that it was an “extraordinary injunction of worldwide scope.” Government lawyers asked late Friday for an immediate stay of Forrest’s ban on the use of the military in domestic policing and on the empowering of the government to strip U.S. citizens of due process. The request for a stay was an attempt by the government to get the judge, pending appeal to a higher court, to grant it the right to continue to use the law. Forrest swiftly rejected the stay, setting in motion a fast-paced appeal to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and possibly, if her ruling is upheld there, to the Supreme Court of the United States. The Justice Department sent a letter to Forrest and the 2nd Circuit late Friday night informing them that at 9 a.m. Monday the Obama administration would ask the 2nd Circuit for an emergency stay that would lift Forrest’s injunction. This would allow Obama to continue to operate with indefinite detention authority until a formal appeal was heard. The government’s decision has triggered a constitutional showdown between the president and the judiciary.
“This may be the most significant constitutional standoff since the Pentagon Papers case,” said Carl Mayer, co-lead counsel for the plaintiffs.
“The administration of President Obama within the last 48 hours has decided to engage in an all-out campaign to block and overturn an order of a federal judge,” said co-lead counsel Bruce Afran. “As Judge Forrest noted in her opinion, nothing is more fundamental in American law than the possibility that journalists, activists and citizens could lose their liberty, potentially forever, and the Obama administration has now lined up squarely with the most conservative elements of the Republican Party to undermine Americans’ civil liberties.”
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/we_won_--_for_now_20120917/
Pravda?Izvesta?D....
= new reply since forum marked as read
Why is our Democratic (Constitutional Expert) President Obama doing this? 
I kind of assumed that Obama Administration would honor the ruling of the Federal Court,
that "indefinite detention" of US Citizens with NO charges, NO trial, NO lawyer, No habeus
corpus, no due process, etc. is UNCONSTITUTIONAL. DUH?
So Obama believes that "our" government's armed forces should be able to arrest, detain,
and lock citizens up, and even torture them (see Bradley Manning), for as long as they want,
because they are "suspected" of being sympathetic or somehow supportive of terrorists.
Is this the President I'm supposed to be out in the trenches fighting for, who is supposed
to "have my back"?
When it comes to this issue, that is a bit hard to swallow.
Even if it passes Congress unanimously, the courts can still find a law
to be unconstitutional, as they have in this case, and make it stick.
Problem is, Obama's DoJ is in an apoplectic frenzy to make damn sure
this law -- by hook or by crook -- somehow avoids getting ruled to be
unconstitutional, and gets rammed down the nation's throat, regardless
of it's constitutionality.
BTW - elsewhere in this string, someone posted that an appeals court
has indeed put a "freeze" on the lower courts permanent injunction to
stop NDAA provisions from being in forced. So we're fucked basically,
thanks to Obama and Holder. 
Get real man.
If the Hedges et. al. lawsuit had never occurred, then "indefinite detention"
would be the law of the land by now, with nary a peep from the citizenry or
the so-called New$ Media ... no questions asked, and none answered.
It is difficult to not take your attack on Hedges, et. al. very personally, as
I care profoundly about the right of We the People to protest, to investigate,
to raise hell ... if that's what it takes, to finally "get it right" in the USA.
This isn't just about Obama's re-election, but even if it was, THIS issue needs
to be broadcast far and wide, and so needs some sunshine disinfectant to
expose this raw betrayal of the US Constitution into full relief, for all to see.
And you want to sweep it all this under the rug? Really? ... until the brown-shirts
come for you and me both? 
