Are you confused about WTF is up with NDAA?
This is the clearest explanation I have found for the whole NDAA issue.
Why NDAA was signed into law:
"...President Barack Obama signed the 2012 NDAA (National Defense Authorization Act of Fiscal Year 2012) into law, ensuring that for the next 12 months, the US armed forces and all of its personnel can draw pay. This is a good thing, if you like the idea of people being able to pay their bills and buy food. Usually the signing of such a law isn’t controversial; the armed forces need to be paid after all. But included in this year’s bill are a number of odd and rather alarming sections that seem to indicate a radical expansion in the power of the executive branch of the United States Government. The Executive Branch, for those of you not well versed in American Politics, is the office of the President (The legislative branch is Congress – both houses – and the judicial branch is the Supreme Court of the United States [SCOTUS]). These sections have been tossed around all over the internet in recent weeks, appearing on Infowars, NaturalNews, CNN, Huffington Post, and a host of other sites and blogs. The general gist of the articles featured on these sites is ‘ZOMG THE PRESIDENT IS DECLARING MARTIAL LAW WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE DERRRRRRRP’. Essentially, these sites argue that certain sections of the bill allow the president to detain without charge or warrant anyone, anywhere in the US; in other words, the US would be declared a battlefield and the army could round up whoever the president decided to label a ‘threat’.
That’s really scary. Good thing for Americans it’s not true. As in false or a lie. The bill does not affect American citizens in any way that is not already authorized by the PATRIOT ACT – in fact if you read the signing statement included in the Think Progress link from above, you’ll see that Obama makes specific note of that and calls the related sections of the new bill ‘pointless’.
After the bill was passed, the internets were all a tizzy about it. Ron Paul supporters, arguably the most vocal and rabid of the bunch, immediately began towing their guy’s line about martial law and other associated nonsense, while liberals and other Obama supporters began weeping and gnashing teeth over this ‘betrayal’ by the man they voted for. But it’s not that simple. It never is. There was a political game being played in Congress, and one of its primary goals was to force Obama to sign into law a bill that he - and his base – had serious reservations about. The bill was designed to seriously burn some of Obama’s remaining political capital and undermine his support before the 2012 elections. This point was lost in some corners of the internets, where rage and recriminations were the order of the day. Over at the hivemind that is Reddit, the politics tab showcased an internet shitstorm of epic proportions. And, because I can’t keep my mouth shut, I waded in. My user name is Mauve_Cubedweller. This was my response:
The President’s opponents played the electorate like a fiddle and will get away with it because people don’t seem to realize they’ve been tricked into being angry at the wrong person.
He signed it because if he didn’t, defense spending including benefits to veterans and their families would not have been authorized. The sections of NDAA that many people here seem to have a problem with are sections that were added into the document by primarily Republican legislators and which the President adamantly opposes but was powerless to stop. I’ll repeat that: the parts of this bill that many people here hate were included against the President’s wishes and in a way that he is powerless to stop. The only way he could have stopped these sections from being included would have been to try to veto the bill in its entirety, a move that would have been both political suicide as well as being futile, as Congress would simply have overridden him. He is explicit in his opposition to exactly the parts of the bill everyone here hates, going so far as to detail exactly which sections he opposes and why."
SNIP
More at link:
http://skepticalcubefarm.wordpress.com/2012/01/02/obama-and-the-ndaa/
Then why is the Obama administration appealing the injunction, you ask?
"The Obama administration, with the clear and obvious option to at least drag out the case, failed to even try. And they used an appeal already, on August 6th. Had they not done so, should the President be defeated in November, the new President would have been within the window in order to file an appeal based on the judgement date of the case, which would have been on February 12th of next year. Instead, that window closes on January 6th, due to this earlier action, closing the window for appeal before the end of President Obama’s first term.
What we are looking at here is a strategic maneuver by the President to strip away these provisions. The USA PATRIOT act put them where the courts could not easily touch them, so he worked hard to make sure that they were attached to the NDAA in just the right way to open up the door. He cut a deal to get certain judges in on certain dates, which put a judge he selected in to the correct court at just the right time for the NDAA signature. Then, he gave a strong enough defense to make sure that Congress could not go after him for failing to do his job as President, but not strong enough to drag out the case. Then the administration prematurely executed their appeal, ensuring that getting another appeal opportunity would be more difficult, and even then it would not be in the hands of any successor.
This is playing political chess. Without ever exposing himself to liability, the President, a constitutional lawyer before entering into politics, used the system in order to overturn one of the most easily abusive and abhorrent provisions which has ever been signed into law, the suspension of Habeas Corpus."
SNIP
More at link:
http://www.addictinginfo.org/2012/09/13/ndaa-detention-struck-down/
