Tuesday, January 8, 2013

NDAA Removes Guarantee of Trial by Jury

On January 2, 2013, U.S. President Barack Obama signed the Fiscal Year 2013 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). This renewed his unconstitutional power to detain U.S. citizens indefinitely without trial and deprive them of their right of due process. Attempts were made by some lawmakers to amend the unconstitutional provisions of the bill, but these were stripped out of the bill during the reconciliation process between the House of Representatives version and the Senate version. Senator Rand Paul opposed the final bill, and complained in a statement that “The decision by the NDAA conference committee, led by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) to strip the National Defense Authorization Act of the amendment that protects American citizens against indefinite detention now renders the entire NDAA unconstitutional… Removing those protections now takes us back to square one and does as much violence to the Constitution as last year’s NDAA. When the government can arrest suspects without a warrant, hold them without trial, deny them access to counsel or admission of bail, we have shorn the Bill of Rights of its sanctity. “Our Bill of Rights is not something that can be cherry-picked at legislators’ convenience,” said Mr. Paul. “When I entered the United States Senate, I took an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution. It is for this reason that I will strongly oppose passage of the McCain conference report that strips the guarantee to a trial by jury.”

 One hundred years ago it was predicted that every principle of the U.S. Constitution will eventually be repudiated. See Testimonies for the Church, Vol. 5, and page 451.

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