Free Republic

Under Sections 1031and 1032 of the National Defense Authorization Act for the Fiscal Year 2012, the United States Congress has proposed to give the Department of Defense the explicit power to take civilians into military custody, detain them indefinitely with no charges or trial. Well hidden in the 682-page long National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the Bill under the title ‘Detainee Matters’ has received tragically sparse coverage in the American national media, widely-read national newspapers and broadly-watched national television channels blocking the existence of this impending legislation described by rights organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) as...

The Democrat-led Senate yesterday adopted legislation giving homosexuals additional protections under federal hate-crime laws, attaching the measure to the defense authorization bill and daring President Bush to veto it as promised. "The president of the United States has never vetoed, in the history of the United States, a defense authorization bill," said Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, Massachusetts Democrat and chief sponsor of the amendment. "For this reason and for many others ... the defense authorization deserves to be passed [into law]."