US District Judge ruled the NDAA Act unconstitutional.

Washington, DC - A day before Congress weighs an amendment to end indefinite military detentions in the U.S., a federal judge Wednesday ruled the law that allows the practice unconstitutional.

Saying the measure has "chilling impact on First Amendment rights," U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest, of New York's Eastern District, found that a group of reporters and activists who brought the lawsuit had no way of knowing whether they could be subjected to it. That makes it an unconstitutional infringement on the First Amendment's free speech right and the Fifth Amendment's right to due process, Forrest said in a written opinion.

The lead plaintiffs -- Pulitzer Prize winner Chris Hedges of the Nation Institute and Tangerine Bolen, who runs the website RevolutionTruth -- argued that they conceivably could be grabbed under the law because they deal with sources that U.S. authorities may deem to fall under the law, Section 1021 of the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act.

The law defines the suspects who can be detained as a "person who was a part of or substantially supported al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces."

Forrest found the language too vague, and repeatedly tried to get government attorneys to say that the reporters' fears were unfounded. The lawyers declined.

"At the hearing on this motion, the government was unwilling or unable to state that these plaintiffs would not be subject to indefinite detention under [section] 1021," Forrest wrote. "Plaintiffs are therefore at risk of detention, of losing their liberty, potentially for many years.

"An individual could run the risk of substantially supporting or directly supporting an associated force without even being aware that he or she was doing so," Forrest wrote. "In the face of what could be indeterminate military detention, due process requires more."

"We dealt a pretty big blow to two branches of Congress and President Obama," Bolen told The Huffington Post. Bolen got involved in the lawsuit because she worked extensively on the Wikileaks and Bradley Manning cases, and used her website to expose where the war on terror has gone tragically wrong, including interviewing Iraqis and Afghans with damning tales to tell.

"Given that I engage in those two activities and I have an entire team around the world, I really felt that under the vague language of the NDAA, someone like me could easily get in trouble," Bolen said.

"If I start showing that we're behaving in such an egregious manner in this country in our alleged war on terror, and I become a thorn in the side of the U.S government in fighting for our rights -- the phrase material support, I'm talking to, quote, alleged terrorists or people around the world who may be questionable -- just by talking to them and interviewing them on a platform, am I providing them material support?" Bolen said. "That was my fear."

The author and activist Naomi Wolf said watching the judge question administration lawyers repeatedly on the issue of who might be detained under the law -- and the lawyers not answering -- was downright chilling. To have the judge find that state of affairs unconstitutional was a profound relief, Wolf said in an interview.

"To hear those words -- it's so true, it's so obvious -- it puts in glaring relief the hideousness, the unconstitutionality, the darkness of this legislative efffort and others like it," Wolf said. "She is so completely, obviously right. It's nothing short of treason to have put forward legislation like this, let alone to have had most of the people who represent us and our president sign off on this clearly, obviously criminally unconstitutional -- unconstitutional is inadequate. It's anti-constitutional. It's dictatorial.

NY District Court ruling:
http://www.courthousenews.com/2012/05/16/Hedges%20v.%20Obama.pdf

NDAA hearing notes: http://naomiwolf.org/2012/03/ndaa-hearing-notes/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/16/homeland-battlefield-act-unconstitutional_n_1522587.html

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_HOMELAND_BATTLEFIELD_ACT_LAWSUIT?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2012-05-16-19-31-39

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-05-16/military-detention-law-blocked-by-new-york-judge.html

http://endthelie.com/2012/05/18/pushing-back-against-tyranny-judge-rules-indefinite-detention-sections-of-ndaa-unconstitutional/#axzz1vEHoWctN

http://www.businessweek.com/ap/2012-05/D9UQEUG80.htm


Government Defies Federal Judge on NDAA.

In Hedges v. Obama, the government routinely avoided the judge’s questions and demands: http://www.nysd.uscourts.gov/cases/show.php?db=special&id=174

The Court: When we are talking about cases which have used the phrase ‘substantially supported’ and said that that is a valid criterion under the AUMF or of the legislation, that’s not the same thing as saying that . . . any court has found, one way or the other, that ‘substantially supported’ has an understandable meaning to an ordinary citizen?

The Government: It’s true that the courts have not expressly ruled that, that’s right.

The Court: Give me an example. Tell me what it means to substantially support associated forces.

Government: I’m not in a position to give specific examples.

The Court: Give me one.

Government: I’m not in a position to give one specific example.

The Court: Assume you were just an American citizen and you’re reading the statute and you wanted to make sure you do not run afoul of it because you are a diligent U.S. citizen wanting to stay on the right side of §1021, and you read the phrase ‘directly supported’. What does that mean to you?

Government: Again it has to be taken in the context of armed conflict informed by the laws of war.

Court: That’s fine. Tell me what that means?

The Government: I cannot offer a specific example. I don’t have a specific example.

After seeing the ridiculous responses the government had given her, and finding that even the government could not define those terms, Judge Katherine Forrest issued her ruling against the NDAA, stating: “This measure has a chilling impact on first amendment rights.”

She then granted her temporary injunction:

As set forth above, this Court has found that plaintiffs have shown a likelihood of success on the merits regarding their constitutional claim and it therefore has a responsibility to insure that the public's constitutional rights are protected.

Accordingly, this Court finds that the public interest is best served by the issuance of the preliminary relief recited herein.

This should be the end of it. This landmark case should be a victory for Americans, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. The judge clearly states “the public’s constitutional rights” and “the public interest.”

The government construes this Court’s Order as applying only as to the named plaintiffs in this suit.

Just when you want to believe there are good people in the highest levels of our federal government, statements like this bring you back to reality. The government continued:

Although the Order fails to comply with Fed. R. Civ. P. 58, and the concluding paragraph of the Order is not, on its face, clear as to whom the injunction benefits, the government reads it in light of the well-established principle that courts 'neither want nor need to provide relief to nonparties when a narrower remedy will fully protect the litigants'

The Judge said her order was to protect the public interest. No informed human being could read it otherwise. Yet, according to the government, they can still detain you because you are not a named plaintiff. Our government is so entwined in a power grab, they will stop at nothing, even twisting court orders, to strip us of our Constitutional rights.

The government defied the court, the Constitution.
 http://www.activistpost.com/2012/05/government-defies-federal-judge-on-ndaa.html