March 4, 2018
In a heavily one-sided vote, the Idaho state House of Representatives passed a bill outlawing the execution of a federal law that purports to grant the president power to indefinitely detain Americans he suspects of being threats to the homeland.
As reported by the People Against the NDAA (PANDA):
The Restoring Constitutional Governance Act, H473, passed out of the Idaho House of Representatives on Monday, 2/26/2018 with a final vote of 63-4-3. This legislation is the strongest in the nation as it explicitly prohibits the laws of war from being used on non-soldiers in Idaho, and Idaho citizens anywhere, and will punish any person, including Federal or international agents, who attempts to utilize those powers.
The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) includes provisions that are noxious to liberty and absolutely abhorrent to the Constitution and the rights to life, liberty, and property it protects.
Here’s a bit of history on the legislation partially banned by the Idaho House.
On December 31, 2011, with the then-President Barack Obama's signing of the NDAA for fiscal year 2012, the writ of habeas corpus — a civil right so fundamental to Anglo-American common law history that it predates the Magna Carta — is voidable upon the command of the president of the United States. The Sixth Amendment right to counsel is also revocable at his will.
One of the most noxious elements of the NDAA is that it places the American military at the disposal of the president for the apprehension, arrest, and detention of those suspected of posing a danger to the homeland (whether inside or outside the borders of the United States and whether the suspect be a citizen or foreigner). The endowment of such a power to the president by the Congress is nothing less than a de facto legislative repeal of the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, the law forbidding the use of the military in domestic law enforcement.
Furthermore, a key component of the NDAA mandates a frightening grant of immense and unconstitutional power to the executive branch. Under the provisions of Section 1021, the president is afforded the absolute power to arrest and detain citizens of the United States without their being informed of any criminal charges, without a trial on the merits of those charges, and without a scintilla of the due process safeguards protected by the Constitution of the United States.
Additionally, in order to execute the provisions of Section 1021 described in the previous paragraph, subsequent clauses (Section 1022, for example) unlawfully give the president the absolute and unquestionable authority to deploy the armed forces of the United States to apprehend and to indefinitely detain those suspected of threatening the security of the “homeland.” In the language of this legislation, these people are called “covered persons.”
The universe of potential “covered persons” includes every citizen of the United States of America. Any American could one day find himself or herself branded a “belligerent” and thus subject to the complete confiscation of his or her constitutional civil liberties and nearly never-ending incarceration in a military prison.
The Idaho bill was supported was a coalition of citizens from across a broad spectrum of political ideologies.
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