by Alex Alvarez | 12:03 am, December 8th, 2011
Wednesday, Daily Show host Jon Stewart took a look at the passage of a bill that would allow the government to detain certain American prisoners indefinitely, without a trial.
He noted what a brief amount of time it took to discuss such an important move, airing a clip of Sen. Rand Paul calling the bill “unamerican,” and of Sen. John McCain calling out Paul’s “opinion” for possibly allowing American terrorists to go free and continue trying to harm their fellow citizens. Sen.Carl Levin, meanwhile, noted that Al Qaeda brought “that war to our shows” and Sen. Lindsey Graham said they were trying to “destroy our way of life.”
“So we’re gonna destroy it before they can get their hands on it,” joked Stewart.
Cut to: then-Senator Barack Obama telling an audience in 2007 that “we are not a country that runs prisons that locks people away without ever telling them why they’re there or what they’re charged with.”
But Obama is going to veto this piece of legislation not because he “objects to the executive branch having near infinite power to detain whoever it wants,” as Stewart described it, but because it doesn’t allow him “totally infinite power.”
That said! Prisoners would be freed once “the war on terror ends” and “terror surrenders.”
As for people who feel the passage of this bill wouldn’t impact them personally because 1) they are not terrorists and 2) do not actively support terrorist activity, Sen. Paul reminds us that even people who are “missing fingers” or who own guns or ammo are considered possible terror suspects by the U.S. government and, as such, could possibly feel the impact of this piece of legislation. Or, you know. People who may have, at one time, attended a madrasa, perhaps as a child. Or who have associated with radical thinkers. Or who have routinely hung out with dudes missing a few fingers.
People like…. Well, far be it from me to spoil the surprise.
Check out the segment for yourselves, via Comedy Central:
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