If the NDAA Is So Essential, Then Use It Right

Barack Obama is the most grown-up president we've had since Eisenhower. Yet even he cannot turn down unconstitutional power handed to him on a platter.

Adam Serwer at Mother Jones:

... there's a bipartisan group of Senators who want to protect the president's authority to imprison American citizens without proving they're guilty of anything at all. Barack Obama, for his part, hasn't weighed in on either side—but given that the president has promised never to attempt to use this power, it's a mystery why he wouldn't vocally oppose it. If Obama and his advisers believe this kind of indefinite detention is an anathema to due process, why not support a bipartisan effort to ensure that Americans' constitutional rights aren't dependent on the whim of whichever president is in office?

At least the battle lines here are clearly drawn in a way they weren't over last year's defense bill. One group of legislators thinks Americans can be deprived of their liberty in their own home country without a trial. The other thinks the government has to actually prove you're guilty of something first.

Or as Wonkette commenter Wile E. Quixote put it:

It's too bad that President Obama doesn't have my finely developed sense of irony. If Wile E. Quixote were in the Oval Office and was handed an Enabling Act like the NDAA by a bunch of teabaggers and craven Democratic dipshits like Carl Levin the first thing that President Quixote would do with his shiny new NDAA powers would be to declare everyone who voted for the NDAA a terrorist and have them sent to Gitmo. Just to be sure he'd also find all of the people who contirbuted to their campaigns, and everyone at Fox News, and send them there as well. Think of how much fun that would be.