Salon.com > Daniel Ellsberg

NDAA is back in court

Wed, 06 Feb 2013 19:57:00 +0000

While CIA director nominee John Brennan faces a grilling at his Senate confirmation hearing Wednesday over the legal reasoning behind Obama's "kill lists," another sprawling stain on the Obama administration's civil liberties record went back to court. A three-judge panel at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit in Manhattan heard oral arguments from lead plaintiff, Pulitzer Prize-winner Chis Hedges, and attorneys in the lawsuit over the indefinite detention provision in the National Defense Authorization Act.

The controversial provision 1021(b)(2) of 2012 NDAA gives the government the power to indefinitely hold U.S. citizens in military detention. Hedges, later joined by plaintiffs including Noam Chomsky and Daniel Ellsberg, filed suit against the president to squash the statute. In a landmark ruling last September, federal Judge Katherine Forrest struck down the indefinite detention provision, saying it likely violates the First and Fifth Amendments of U.S. citizens. President Obama's attorneys swiftly appealed Judge Forrest’s ruling and sought an emergency stay on the injunction. On Wednesday, according to the plaintiffs' attorneys, the court "homed in" on the issues underpinning the legal argument between the Department of Justice and the plaintiffs, dubbed "The Magnificent Seven" by supporters.

Climate change: War on the poor

Mon, 29 Oct 2012 13:24:00 +0000

In ancient China, the arrival of a new dynasty was accompanied by “the rectification of names,” a ceremony in which the sloppiness and erosion of meaning that had taken place under the previous dynasty were cleared up and language and its subjects correlated again. It was like a debt jubilee, only for meaning rather than money.

This was part of what made Barack Obama’s first presidential campaign so electrifying: he seemed like a man who spoke our language and called many if not all things by their true names. Whatever caused that season of clarity, once elected, Obama promptly sank into the stale, muffled, parallel-universe language wielded by most politicians, and has remained there ever since. Meanwhile, the far right has gotten as far as it has by mislabeling just about everything in our world -- a phenomenon which went supernova in this year of “legitimate rape,” “the apology tour,” and “job creators.” Meanwhile, their fantasy version of economics keeps getting more fantastic. (Maybe there should be a rectification of numbers, too.)

NDAA plaintiffs fear U.S. citizens already in military detention

Thu, 27 Sep 2012 21:45:00 +0000

A group of journalists and activists took to content sharing site Reddit today to answer questions on their lawsuit against President Obama's indefinite detention act. In his responses, one of the plaintiffs, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges, said he believed that there are already U.S. citizens held in military detention by the U.S. at home and abroad.

Chris Hedges and Daniel Ellsberg are among the six plaintiffs (others include Noam Chomsky and Naomi Wolf) who recently won a permanent block from a federal judge against the NDAA (National Defense Authorization Act) and its provision to allow the indefinite detention of U.S. citizens. The Obama administration's attorneys immediately filed an appeal to overturn the judge's decision.