Post-constitutional America

So much for the theory that transforming the racial and cultural demographics of America was not tantamount to turning America into not-America:

Pulitzer prize winning reporter Chris Hedges – along with journalist Naomi Wolf, Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, activist Tangerine Bolen and others – sued the government to join the NDAA’s allowance of the indefinite detention of Americans.

The trial judge in the case asked the government attorneys 5 times whether journalists like Hedges could be indefinitely detained simply for interviewing and then writing about bad guys. The government refused to promise that journalists like Hedges won’t be thrown in a dungeon for the rest of their lives without any right to talk to a judge.

The trial judge ruled that the indefinite detention bill was unconstitutional, holding:

    This Court rejects the government’s suggestion that American citizens can be placed in military detention indefinitely, for acts they could not predict might subject them to detention.

But the court of appeal overturned that decision, based upon the assumption that limited the NDAA to non-U.S. citizens:

    We thus conclude, consistent with the text and buttressed in part by the legislative history, that Section 1021 [of the 2012 NDAA] means this: With respect to individuals who are not citizens, are not lawful resident aliens, and are not captured or arrested within the United States, the President’s [Authorization for Use of Military Force] authority includes the authority to detain those responsible for 9/11 as well as those who were a part of, or substantially supported, al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners—a detention authority that Section 1021 concludes was granted by the original AUMF. But with respect to citizens, lawful resident aliens, or individuals captured or arrested in the United States, Section 1021 simply says nothing at all.

The court of appeal ignored the fact that the co-sponsors of the indefinite detention law said it does apply to American citizens, and that top legal scholars agree. Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal of the case, thus blessing and letting stand the indefinite detention law stand unchanged.

 Now, do you really think it is an accident that a post-Christian and multiracial America just happens to also be post-constitutional? Do you really think it is nothing more than pure coincidence that those who reject the strictures of the Natural Law also reject the limits imposed by Constitutional Law?

The men who wrote and signed the Constitution were, for the most part, straight white male Protestants of English descent. There is not a single straight, white, male Protestant of English descent on the U.S. Supreme Court that just granted the military and the executive branch agencies extra-judicial powers over the American citizenry. If you do not believe that the differing population demographics that distinguish European culture from aboriginal culture are irrelevant, why do you assume that the different population demographics between the authors of the Constitution and the current Supreme Court must be irrelevant?