Senate renews the NDAA Act, power to arrest Americans remains.

By a vote of 98-0 (two senators abstained) lawmakers in the upper chamber approved the Fiscal Year 2013 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). Not a single senator objected to the passage once again of a law that purports to permit the president, supported by nothing more substantial than his own belief that the suspect poses a threat to national security, to deploy the U.S. military to arrest an American living in America.

As The New American reported, an amendment to the 2013 version of the defense spending bill passed by the Senate clarified the right to trial of “citizens and permanent legal residents” detained under the relevant sections of the revamped measure.

The amendment, known as the Feinstein-Lee Amendment, was cosponsored by Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Mike Lee (R-Utah), and Rand Paul (R-Ky.). In an interview Tuesday with The New American, spokesmen for Lee and Paul admitted that the amendment did not go far enough in the defense of due process, but said it was a step in the right direction.

“Colored by our experience with the due process amendment to the NDAA we offered in 2012, we knew that we would have nowhere near the number of votes needed to pass an amendment that guaranteed due process for all persons detained under the NDAA,” explained Doug Stafford, chief of staff for Rand Paul.

Stafford and Rob Porter, general counsel for the office of Senator Lee, reiterated that they recognize that the Feinstein-Lee Amendment was not the ideal attack on the indefinite detention provisions of the NDAA. Senators Lee and Paul believe, the spokesmen assured The New American, that “the full panoply of due process rights should apply to all persons, not just American citizens.”

For now, however, the NDAA 2013 is almost law, and the president’s power to send troops to arrest Americans living in America remains intact and unabridged. That is rightfully terrifying to constitutionalists, journalists, and any other American who fears being kidnapped by the military and indefinitely detained.

Yes, the Feinstein-Lee Amendment explicitly guarantees the right of a trial by jury to American citizens, but it also explicitly authorizes the president to indefinitely detain them, a substantial step beyond even last year’s NDAA and the Authority for the Use of Military Force (AUMF), upon which it builds.

Despite this despicable extension of despotic powers so unconscionable and unconstitutional, The Hill reported after the Tuesday’s vote that this year’s NDAA passed so overwhelmingly because of the “the lack of controversial issues this year.”

Most senators were equally gleeful.

Prior to the vote, Senator Carl Levin (D-Mich.) bragged that he was “so proud our committee could keep the tradition of passing for 51 times a defense authorization bill.”

This was, in fact, only the second time in half a century that an annual defense spending bill has passed unanimously.

Last week, President Obama threatened to veto the bill because it “trespasses on his power.”

Although the denial of due process to all persons and the retention of the totalitarian power granted the president to deploy the U.S. military to arrest citizens without charge are by far the most loathsome and illegal provisions of the 2013 version of the NDAA, there are other sections equally worthy of condemnation.

For example, Section 1203 authorizes the secretaries of Defense and State:

(1) To enhance the ability of the Yemen Ministry of Interior Counter Terrorism Forces to conduct counterterrorism operations against al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and its affiliates.
(2) To enhance the capacity of the national military forces, security agencies serving a similar defense function, other counterterrorism forces, and border security forces of Djibouti, Ethiopia, and Kenya to conduct counterterrorism operations against al Qaeda, al Qaeda affiliates, and al Shabaab.
(3) To enhance the capacity of national military forces participating in the African Union Mission in Somalia to conduct counterterrorism operations against al Qaeda, al Qaeda affiliates, and al Shabaab.http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/item/13829-senate-unanimously-passes-2013-ndaa-power-to-arrest-americans-remains