5 Reasons to Oppose the NDAA

New from yours truly at Campaign for Liberty:

Suppose you were a humanitarian relief worker.  You spend your time at home and abroad bringing food aid to those whose lives have been devastated by disaster.  You feel like you’re devoting your life to a good cause and truly helping your fellow man. 

Then the U.S. government sends you to jail, without a charge or trial, forever.

When the War on Terror is over, you’re told, you might have a sporting chance of getting out.  Because the War on Terror is totally going to end any day now, right?  Dream big, detainees!

If that doesn’t strike you as a good scenario, your instincts are correct.  It is, however, a conceivable situation if the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA, or S.1867) is signed into law.  Under the bill’s Section 1031*, the federal government will claim the authority to indefinitely detain anyone, anywhere, if it deems them a threat in the fight against terror.  Indeed, the NDAA “designates the world as the battlefield, including the homeland,” as Senator Lindsey Graham, as strong supporter of the measure, has put it.  And the qualifications for being a terrorist threat are vague—so vague, in fact, that a “relief worker could end up in indefinite military detention without charge or trial for giving food or medical assistance to someone who turns out to have been a Taliban member or supporter.”

To say this is a scary bill is to utter a massive understatement, and it’s no wonder that civil libertarians of all political persuasions have been up in arms as the NDAA passed the Senate with a whopping 93 percent approval rating from our “representatives.”

Keep reading for 5 reasons to join the fight against the NDAA if you haven't already.  This piece is also posted on my website here.

The U.S.-Backed Crackdown in Bahrain

The heroic John Glaser, assistant editor at Antiwar.com, blogs about Foreign Policy's interview of Nabeel Rajab where the Bahraini activist has this to say about the U.S.-supported repression in Bahrain:

President Barack Obama has repeatedly sided with the brutal Al Khalifa regime there; a stark contrast to the rhetoric normally associated with the administration’s support of the various Arab Spring uprisings.

Why the contrast? Something to do with the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet, perhaps?

John Glaser also talked to Scott Horton of Antiwar Radio about new developments in the Middle East including the U.S.-backed brutal crackdown in Bahrain.

David Axelrod Speaks at Fordham University

Originally posted at The Fordham Gazette, Fordham's newest source of conservative and libertarian news and opinion.

On October 19th, David Axelrod, the former Senior Advisor to President Obama and now head of his 2012 re-election campaign, spoke at Fordham University to a crowd of roughly 200 students in Keating 1st Auditorium at the request of the Fordham College Democrats for Fordham's American Age Lecture Series.

Mr. Axelrod's visit comes at a time when President Obama's approval ratings among young voters (age 18-29) has slipped to an all-time low of 45% in a recent Gallup survey, and his prospects for re-election looking far from assured. Despite these grim statistics, Mr. Axelrod's speech, for the most part, was not overtly partisan.

He opened his speech by singing verses from the school anthems of P.S. 40 and J.S. 104, the two NYC public schools he attended, describing how his first campaign experience was when he was only 10 years old for a local candidate who later won, then attended the University of Chicago, one of the most prominent universities in the country for the study of political science. It was while attending this university that he worked on the Senate campaign of Rep. Paul Simon (D-IL), his first major campaign activity.

Protesting Obama’s Speech…On Two Days Notice

Editor's Update:  Here's the video the chapter made about their activism, and the text of the "programs" they handed out is at the bottom of the post:

From YAL at NC State:

Monday morning September 12 at around 11 AM I was sitting in our campus’ brickyard waiting to head inside to class when I got a notification on my phone. Our chapter president, Brady Nemeth, had posted on our facebook page an article from The Technician, our school newspaper, saying that President Obama would be coming to campus.

When I read the article I realized two things:  The first being that this was purely a campaign speech because Obama was coming to speak in North Carolina, a potential swing state, about the “American Jobs Act” or as we here at NC State YAL decided to call “Stimulus Round 2.”

The other thing I noticed was the speech was at noon on Wednesday September 14^th…exactly two days from that moment. It was a brilliant move by the Obama administration to only give us a two days notice because he could easily rally supporters and students interested in seeing a sitting president while it would be quite difficult for those who oppose his failed policies to organize a counter-demonstration. Well, I’d say we managed to do ok, as you will see.