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The Obama administration is the most forceful, vigilant and merciless in cracking down on whistle-blowers and leakers in nearly a century. The liberal law professor in the White House is no softie when it comes to punishing voices who undercut his pronouncements and policies. Since 1917, when the Espionage Act was passed to safeguard national secrets, prior presidents have brought three cases. Since taking office, Obama has used the law six times. In most of these cases, the White House went after whistle-blowers and leakers whose claims embarrassed the Obama administration. Examples of such prosecutions include the massive WikiLeaks disclosure of some 250,000 diplomatic cables along with lesser-known instances such as information about rough interrogations and botched computer operations. The common thread: The White House looked bad. Similar prosecution could happen again with the drone and cyber-war stories, but don't count on it. In these two cases, the results enhanced Obama's image, a result that won't draw presidential ire. Also, the news accounts that showed the president in charge of drone targets and approving a computer-jamming worm didn't disclose direct intelligence details or names. But there's a disturbing pattern, especially as the November election draws closer. This White House is bothered by the ever-present suggestion that it's weak on terrorism or hesitant to look tough against looming enemies - and it's willing to go to extraordinary means to pursue leaks of unflattering stories.
Note: For lots more on government secrecy and corruption from reliable sources, click here and here.
Last year’s tsunami disaster in Japan clouded the nation’s nuclear future, idled its reactors and rendered its huge stockpile of plutonium useless for now. So, the industry’s plan to produce even more has raised a red flag. Nuclear industry officials say they hope to start producing a half-ton of plutonium within months, in addition to the more than 35 tons Japan already has stored around the world. That’s even though all the reactors that might use it are either inoperable or offline while the country rethinks its nuclear policy after the tsunami-generated Fukushima crisis. “It’s crazy,” said Princeton University professor Frank von Hippel, a leading authority on nonproliferation issues and a former assistant director for national security in the White House Office of Science and Technology. “There is absolutely no reason to do that.” Japan’s nuclear industry produces plutonium — which is strictly regulated globally because it also is used for nuclear weapons — by reprocessing spent, uranium-based fuel in a procedure aimed at decreasing radioactive waste that otherwise would require long-term storage. Fuel reprocessing remains unreliable and it is questionable whether it is a viable way of reducing Japan’s massive amounts of spent fuel rods, said Takeo Kikkawa, a Hitotsubashi University professor specializing in energy issues. “Japan should abandon the program altogether,” said Hideyuki Ban, co-director of a respected anti-nuclear Citizens’ Nuclear Information Center. “Then we can also contribute to the global effort for nuclear non-proliferation.”
Note: For a state-of-the-art analysis revealing that radioactive fallout from the Fukushima meltdown is at least as big as Chernobyl and more global in reach, click here.
Political gridlock. High national debt. Rock-bottom bond rates. An aging population. Warnings about more downgrades. Sound like the United States? Indeed. But those characteristics also describe Japan -- the country that fiscal experts often point to as a cautionary tale about the risk of carrying too much national debt for too long. Ever since a stock market crash and banking crisis more than 20 years ago, Japan has suffered from anemic growth for much of that time and its debt has soared. The country's debt is projected to be 239% of the size of its economy by the end of this year. U.S. gross debt, by contrast, is a little over 100% of GDP. On almost every economic and demographic measure, U.S. fiscal problems are still less urgent than the ones facing Japan today, said Nariman Behravesh, chief economist at IHS Global Insight. In his view, the biggest debt-related problem facing Americans today is gridlock in Washington. "We have a political crisis in the United States," he said. There are plenty of ideas for how Washington could curb the growth in debt without undermining the economy. For example, lawmakers could phase in tax increases and spending cuts over time. They could agree on a credible plan that puts off serious fiscal restraint until the economy is stronger. What's missing though is political cooperation. But, Behravesh said, "If we're careful, we can resolve this sensibly."
Note: For an alternative analysis by Paul Craig Roberts, click here. He notes that "Unlike Japan, whose national debt is the largest of all, Americans do not own their own public debt. Much of US debt is owned abroad, especially by China, Japan, and OPEC, the oil exporting countries. This places the US economy in foreign hands." Roberts is a former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury, Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal, columnist for Business Week, and professor of economics.
Scientists have for the first time succeeded in taking skin cells from patients with heart failure and transforming them into healthy, beating heart tissue that could one day be used to treat the condition. The researchers, based in Haifa, Israel, said there were still many years of testing and refining ahead. But the results meant they might eventually be able to reprogram patients' cells to repair their own damaged hearts. "We have shown that it's possible to take skin cells from an elderly patient with advanced heart failure and end up with his own beating cells in a laboratory dish that are healthy and young - the equivalent to the stage of his heart cells when he was just born," said Lior Gepstein from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, who led the work. The researchers, whose study was published in the European Heart Journal on Wednesday, said clinical trials of the technique could begin within 10 years. Gepstein's team took skin cells from two men with heart failure - aged 51 and 61 - and transformed them by adding three genes and then a small molecule called valproic acid to the cell nucleus. They found that the resulting hiPSCs [Human induced pluripotent stem cells] were able to differentiate to become heart muscle cells, or cardiomyocytes, just as effectively as hiPSCs that had been developed from healthy, young volunteers who acted as controls for the study. The team was then able to make the cardiomyocytes develop into heart muscle tissue, which they grew in a laboratory dish together with existing cardiac tissue.
Note: For key reports from major media sources on important health issues, click here.
As NATO protesters marched by the hundreds to Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s house, three others were in court Saturday facing terrorism charges for allegedly planning to bomb the mayor’s residence, police stations and Obama’s campaign headquarters during the upcoming summit. Three men who had been arrested in a raid Wednesday appeared before a Cook County judge, charged with conspiracy to commit terrorism, possession of an explosive device and providing material support for terrorism. The men ... are being held on $1.5 million bond. Prosecutors alleged they had made Molotov cocktails and had discussed using other weapons, including swords and knives. Lawyers for the suspects disputed those claims. “There are a lot of sensational allegations being made,” said Kris Hermes, a spokesman for the National Lawyers Guild. “This is obviously an effort to chill dissent ahead of the NATO demonstrations.” As darkness fell, the crowds of protesters who gathered to show support to the terror suspects swelled to nearly 1,000, and there were several tense scuffles with police. At least 10 more protesters were detained, Hermes said.
Note: This entire article contains almost nothing about the trumped up charges against these protestors. You can learn more about police provocation of the group at this link.
The “Medicine Baba,” Omkar Nath Sharma, 75, spends his days knocking on doors in Delhi’s upper and middle class neighborhoods, collecting their leftover medicines and giving them to the poor. Mr. Sharma, a former medical technician ... starts his day at 6 a.m., when he leaves his rented home in Manglapuri, a southern Delhi suburb, and travels by buses on his senior citizen pass to wealthier parts of the city. He has built up a pool of regular contributors in neighborhoods like Green Park, who he calls on when they have medicines they no longer need. Wearing an orange shirt that says “Mobile medicine bank for poor patients,” he picks up medicines that he estimates are worth 200,000 rupees, about $3,860, a month, and then distributes them to individuals and charitable clinics for no charge. Mr. Sharma knows that loosely distributing medicine brings real risks, so he said he will only give them out if a patient has a prescription from a doctor. Vimla Rani, a 47-year-old maid, said she is alive because of Sharma’s medicines, which help to control her asthma. “I keep on getting inhalers and other medicines from Medicine Baba,” she said. “Thousands of poor people die as they can’t afford expensive medicines, while at the same time unused medicines worth millions get wasted,” Mr. Sharma said. He also distributes medicine to more than a dozen nongovernmental organizations.
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A spate of earthquakes across the middle of the U.S. is "almost certainly" man-made, and may be caused by wastewater from oil or gas drilling injected into the ground, U.S. government scientists said in a study. Researchers from the U.S. Geological Survey said that for the three decades until 2000, seismic events in the nation's midsection averaged 21 a year. They jumped to 50 in 2009, 87 in 2010 and 134 in 2011. Those statistics, included in the abstract of a research paper to be discussed at the Seismological Society of America conference next week in San Diego, will add pressure on an energy industry already confronting more regulation of the process of hydraulic fracturing. An abstract of the federal study, which was led by William Ellsworth, Earthquake Science Center staff director for the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, California, was published online earlier this month. "A naturally-occurring rate change of this magnitude is unprecedented outside of volcanic settings or in the absence of a main shock, of which there were neither in this region," Ellsworth and his colleagues wrote.
Note: Few are aware that Canada's province Quebec has banned fracking. Many other places are considering similar measures.
The ultra-Orthodox Jewish community has been a strong supporter of Charles J. Hynes, the Brooklyn district attorney. Mr. Hynes has won election six times as district attorney thanks in part to support from ultra-Orthodox rabbis. But in recent years, as allegations of child sexual abuse have shaken the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community in Brooklyn, victims’ rights groups have expressed concern that he is not vigorously pursuing these cases because of his deep ties to the rabbis. Many of the rabbis consider sexual abuse accusations to be community matters best handled by rabbinical authorities, who often do not report their conclusions to the police. In 2009, as criticism of his record mounted, Mr. Hynes set up a program to reach out to ultra-Orthodox victims of child sexual abuse. The program is intended to “ensure safety in the community and to fully support those affected by abuse,” his office said. In recent months, Mr. Hynes and his aides have said the program has contributed to an effective crackdown on child sexual abuse among ultra-Orthodox Jews, saying it had led to 95 arrests involving more than 120 victims. But Mr. Hynes has taken the highly unusual step of declining to publicize the names of defendants prosecuted under the program — even those convicted. At the same time, he continues to publicize allegations of child sexual abuse against defendants who are not ultra-Orthodox Jews. This policy of shielding defendants’ names because of their religious status is not followed by the other four district attorneys in New York City, and has rarely, if ever, been adopted by prosecutors around the country.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable sources on sexual abuse scandals involving religious and government institutions, click here.
Gregg Williams' profanity-filled speech to the New Orleans Saints' defensive players the night before their mid-January playoff game against the San Francisco 49ers included a target list: Alex Smith's chin. Vernon Davis' ankles. Kyle Williams' head. Frank Gore's head. And, according to audio captured ... Williams chillingly suggested that 49ers wide receiver Michael Crabtree "becomes human when we (expletive) take out that outside ACL." [This] provided more evidence against the Saints on a day when coach Sean Payton, assistant head coach Joe Vitt and general manager Mickey Loomis met with NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell to appeal penalties for their roles in a bounty scandal that has rocked the league. The audio also raised anew some questions for the NFL. Has the league lost control of what is supposed to be the controlled violence of America's most popular game? And how might the sport be affected by its professional level's apparent disregard for player safety. While Williams' speech ... could easily be criticized for ill intent, it also illustrated the type of macho mentality that has existed in pro football since its inception. A former linebacker [Coy Wire] played under Williams with the Buffalo Bills when players were also paid cash in a similar bounty scheme. "Gregg Williams was part of a culture of relentlessness," says Wire. "It wasn't just him. It was a group of people who wanted to find a competitive edge." In its findings announced in early March, the league maintained that between 22 and 27 players from the Saints defenses from 2009 to 2011 were involved in the bounty program.
The government will be able to monitor the calls, emails, texts and website visits of everyone in the UK under new legislation set to be announced soon. Internet firms will be required to give intelligence agency GCHQ access to communications on demand, in real time. The Home Office says the move is key to tackling crime and terrorism, but civil liberties groups have criticised it. Tory MP David Davis called it "an unnecessary extension of the ability of the state to snoop on ordinary people". A new law ... would not allow GCHQ to access the content of emails, calls or messages without a warrant. But it would enable intelligence officers to identify who an individual or group is in contact with, how often and for how long. They would also be able to see which websites someone had visited. Conservative MP and former shadow home secretary David Davis said it would make it easier for the government "to eavesdrop on vast numbers of people". "What this is talking about doing is not focusing on terrorists or criminals, it's absolutely everybody's emails, phone calls, web access..." He said that until now anyone wishing to monitor communications had been required to gain permission from a magistrate. Nick Pickles, director of the Big Brother Watch campaign group, called the move "an unprecedented step that will see Britain adopt the same kind of surveillance seen in China and Iran". The previous Labour government attempted to introduce a central, government-run database of everyone's phone calls and emails, but eventually dropped the bid after widespread anger.
Note: For more on this from BBC, click here. Though this is interesting news, many know that the government has had easy access to all people's emails, phone calls, and more for many years through systems like echelon and more. For an abundance of major media articles showing how many of the power elite want to create a big-brother society, click here.
On February 2, 2011, President Obama called Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh. The two discussed counterterrorism cooperation and the battle against Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. At the end of the call, according to a White House read-out, Obama “expressed concern” over the release of a man named Abdulelah Haider Shaye, whom Obama said “had been sentenced to five years in prison for his association with AQAP.” It turned out that Shaye had not yet been released at the time of the call, but Saleh did have a pardon for him prepared and was ready to sign it. But ... Abdulelah Haider Shaye is not an Islamist militant or an Al Qaeda operative. He is a journalist. Shaye risked his life to travel to areas controlled by Al Qaeda and to interview its leaders. He also conducted several interviews with the radical cleric Anwar al Awlaki. Shaye did the last known interview with Awlaki just before it was revealed that Awlaki, a US citizen, was on a CIA/JSOC hit list. “We were only exposed to Western media and Arab media funded by the West, which depicts only one image of Al Qaeda,” recalls his best friend Kamal Sharaf, a well-known dissident Yemeni political cartoonist. “But Abdulelah brought a different viewpoint.” Shaye had no reverence for Al Qaeda, but viewed the group as an important story, according to Sharaf.
Note: We generally avoid using sources with a strong bias like The Nation, but as none of the other major media have touched this most important story, we're including it here. For more on this revealing story, click here and here
A powerful sun storm—associated with the second biggest solar flare of the current 11-year sun cycle—is now hitting Earth, so far with few consequences. But the potentially "severe geomagnetic storm," in NASA's words, could disrupt power grids, radio communications, and GPS as well as spark dazzling auroras. The storm ... won't hold a candle to an 1859 space-weather event, scientists say—and it's a good thing too. If a similar sun storm were to occur in the current day—as it well could—modern life could come to a standstill, they add. That storm has been dubbed the Carrington Event, after British astronomer Richard Carrington, who witnessed the megaflare and was the first to realize the link between activity on the sun and geomagnetic disturbances on Earth. During the Carrington Event, northern lights were reported as far south as Cuba and Honolulu, while southern lights were seen as far north as Santiago, Chile. The flares were so powerful that "people in the northeastern U.S. could read newspaper print just from the light of the aurora," Daniel Baker, of the University of Colorado's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, said at a geophysics meeting in December 2010. In addition, the geomagnetic disturbances were strong enough that U.S. telegraph operators reported sparks leaping from their equipment—some bad enough to set fires, said Ed Cliver, a space physicist at the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory in Bedford, Massachusetts. If something similar happened today, the world's high-tech infrastructure could grind to a halt.
Note: For more on this, click here and here. The first article talks about the vulnerability of the world's nuclear reactors to such a storm. If telegraph systems failed in the solar storm of 1859, how much damage do you think such a storm would do to our modern electronics? And why aren't more people talking about this?
A top federal regulator's ties to Monsanto Co., a maker of genetically modified food, are fueling an election-year recall push by consumer and public-interest groups flexing their clout on the Internet. Michael Taylor, the Food and Drug Administration's deputy commissioner for food safety, is at the center of a burgeoning dispute between opponents who have collected more than 420,000 signatures on an online petition demanding he be fired and supporters who praise his efforts to curb food-borne illnesses. At issue is the 16 months ending in 2000 that Taylor worked as Monsanto's vice president for public policy, between stints in the Clinton and Obama administrations. The petition reflects anger over the agency's enforcement actions against small food producers and products such as raw milk. The online petition, along with others circulated on Facebook and other social-media sites since at least August, blames Taylor for allowing genetically modified organisms into the U.S. food supply without requiring testing as to their effects while he served at the agency in the 1990s. Taylor, in an interview, said his work is misrepresented, and the effort to have him fired "is more about Monsanto than about me. The claim is I was a Monsanto lobbyist, which paints a bad picture," he said. "It doesn't say what I did there or what I think about biotechnology."
Note: For lots more on Monsanto's unethical practices, click here and here. For key reports from reliable sources on corporate and government corruption, click here and here.
Staring down a mountain of bras in her basement, Kimba Langas knew things had gotten out of hand. The stay-at-home-mom started collecting unwanted bras as a way to help women on the other side of the world. It started small through word of mouth, and then a Facebook page. But the bras quickly overran her home in suburban Denver, Colorado. They were in her basement, in her garage, in her car. They were in bags, in boxes, in envelopes. Her husband, Jeff, tried to navigate his way around them, but it wasn't easy. Langas collects unwanted bras for a charity called "Free the Girls" which gives them to young women coming out of sex trafficking in Mozambique - not to wear, but to sell in used clothing markets where bras are a luxury item and command top dollar. The girls can make three times the average wage, more than enough to support themselves and not be trafficked again. It was the pastor of her church who came up with the idea for Free the Girls. He was planning on moving to Mozambique for missionary work, and called Langas to see if she would run the project with him. She thought it sounded like fun. Shortly after launching the Facebook page, the bras started coming. The response was much bigger than she expected. "There was a drive in Arizona and the women collected 8,000 bras. There's a church in Tennessee that collected 3,000 bras. There's a group ... in Denver that collected 1,250 bras. It's just one of those things that caught on and spread."
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German President Christian Wulff has announced his resignation, after prosecutors called for his immunity to be lifted. An ally of Chancellor Angela Merkel, Mr Wulff, 52, stepped down over corruption claims involving a dubious home loan. German media say the crisis is unprecedented in post-war Germany. The president's role is largely ceremonial, to serve as a moral authority for the nation. "The developments of the past few days and weeks have shown that [the German people's] trust and thus my effectiveness have been seriously damaged," Mr Wulff said in a brief statement. "For this reason it is no longer possible for me to exercise the office of president at home and abroad as required." At the centre of the row is the story - first published by the Bild newspaper - that Mr Wulff received a low interest 500,000 euro loan (Ł417,000; $649,000) from the wife of a wealthy businessman in October 2008. Mr Wulff, who previously was premier of Lower Saxony, was later asked in the state's parliament if he had had business relations with the businessman, Egon Geerkens, and said he had not, making no mention of his dealings with Mr Geerkens's wife. The president was also heavily criticised for trying to force Bild not to break the story in the first place. It has emerged that he left an angry message on Bild chief editor Kai Diekmann's phone, saying the story must not be published. There were also corruption allegations against Mr Wulff, involving receiving political favours and free holidays from business executives.
Note: For lots more from major media sources on government corruption, click here.
Unusual wear has been found on hundreds of tubes that carry radioactive water at Southern California’s San Onofre Unit 2 nuclear plant, raising questions about the integrity of equipment the company installed in a multimillion-dollar makeover in 2009. The disclosure came two days after a tube leak at the plant’s other unit prompted operators to shut down the reactor as a precaution. A tiny amount of radiation could have escaped, but officials say workers and the public were not endangered. The problems at Unit 2 were discovered during inspections of a steam generator, after the plant 45 miles north of San Diego was taken off-line for maintenance and refueling. The two huge steam generators at Unit 2, each containing 9,700 tubes, were replaced in fall 2009, and a year later in its twin plant, Unit 3, as part of a $670 million overhaul. According to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, more than a third of the wall had been worn away in two tubes at Unit 2, which will require them to be plugged and taken out of service. At least 20 percent of the tube wall was worn away in 69 other tubes, and in more than 800, the thinning was at least 10 percent. Retired NRC engineer and researcher Joram Hopenfeld said the company will have to determine why the tubing is degrading so quickly “before they do anything else.” “I’ve never heard of anything like that over so short a period of time,” Hopenfeld said. “The safety implications could be very, very severe,” Hopenfeld added.
Note: For key reports from reliable sources on dangers posed by the nuclear power industry, click here.
A federal appeals court on [February 2] sanctioned lawyers behind a lawsuit accusing former officials in the Bush administration of orchestrating the Sept. 11 attacks. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit ordered two California lawyers to pay $15,000 in addition to double what the government spent defending the case. Three attorneys -- Dennis Cunningham, William Veale and Mustapha Ndanusa -- filed the lawsuit in 2008 on behalf of April Gallop, a member of the U.S. Army injured in the Pentagon attack on Sept. 11, 2001. The lawyers accused then-Vice President Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld of causing the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in order to create a political atmosphere that would allow the U.S. government to pursue domestic and international policy objectives. The suit alleged conspiracy to cause death and bodily harm and a violation of the Antiterrorism Act. U.S. District Judge Denny Chin dismissed the case in 2010, ruling that the complaint was frivolous and a product of "cynical delusion and fantasy." A three-judge panel of the 2nd Circuit upheld that decision, imposing $15,000 in sanctions on the three lawyers for filing the suit. "We are not delusional by any means. We have the facts, and they cannot be explained," said Veale, a former chief assistant public defender for Contra Costa County, California. The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York declined to comment on the litigation. The case is Gallop v. Cheney et al, U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit, No. 10-1241.
Note: Unmentioned in this article is the fact that the appeals panel which sanctioned the lawyers was presided over by a cousin of former Pres. George W. Bush, who had refused to recuse himself from the case as requested by the lawyers. For more information on this important court case brought by US soldier April Gallop, who was in the Pentagon where it was struck on 9/11, and whose account was suppressed by the FBI but has been brought to light by, among others, Jesse Ventura on his recent television program on the Pentagon, click here and here.
The U.S. Army [will have] destroyed about 90 percent of its aging chemical weapons after it wraps up work this week in Utah, where it has kept its largest stockpile — a witches' brew of toxins, blister and blood agents that accumulated through the Cold War. The Army's Deseret Chemical Depot in Utah's west desert burned its last hard weapons in a 1,500-degree furnace on Wednesday. The depot ... at its peak held some 13,600 tons of chemical agents, making it the world's largest. The U.S. is part of an international treaty to rid the world of chemical weapons, a campaign taking place with spotty success around the globe. The goal was supposed to be accomplished by April 29 but will take years longer. The U.S. has acknowledged it will take as long as 2021 to finish destroying the final 10 percent of its chemical weapons. Russia is farther behind in its effort, having destroyed only about 48 percent of a large cache of chemical weapons. Chemical weapons were introduced into warfare during World War I, killing 90,000 troops on battlefields, according to the Organisation of for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.
Think of the pickup truck from Via Motors as an electric generator on wheels. The truck, unveiled [on January 10] at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit, runs on electricity. But it also can supply electricity - enough to power whole houses. PG&E has been testing two of the pickups since 2010. The trucks could respond to small power outages, temporarily supplying electricity to blacked-out homes. The trucks can supply a maximum of 15 kilowatts of electricity at any given moment - more than the typical house requires. PG&E field workers also could use the pickups to run their power tools. Many of the electric cars now hitting the market are small passenger vehicles, made for commuters. Via, however, targets the other end of the size spectrum. The company, based in the Detroit suburbs, has focused on electrifying large vehicles: trucks, SUVs and vans. Each Via truck has saved PG&E about $2,700 per year in fuel costs, when compared with a conventional pickup. The utility has about 3,500 similar vehicles in its fleet, and converting all of them would save PG&E about $9.5 million each year.
Note: For exciting reports from reliable sources on promising new automotive and energy inventions, click here.
President Obama, after objecting to provisions of a military spending bill that would have forced him to try terrorism suspects in military courts ... signed the bill on [New Year's Eve]. The White House had said that the legislation could lead to an improper military role in overseeing detention and court proceedings and could infringe on the president’s authority in dealing with terrorism suspects. But it said that Mr. Obama could interpret the statute in a way that would preserve his authority. The president, for example, said that he would never authorize the indefinite military detention of American citizens, because “doing so would break with our most important traditions and values as a nation.” He also said he would reject a “rigid across-the-board requirement” that suspects be tried in military courts rather than civilian courts. Congress dropped a provision in the House version of the bill that would have banned using civilian courts to prosecute those suspected of having ties to Al Qaeda. It also dropped a new authorization to use military force against Al Qaeda and its allies. Civil liberties groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union, still oppose the law, in part because of its authorization of military detention camps overseas.
Note: This New York Times article amazingly fails to mention that civil liberties groups oppose this law primarily because it eliminates habeus corpus, Posse Comitatus and Bill of Rights protections, and enables the military to arrest and imprison American citizens on American soil and subject them to military tribunals without due judicial process. These protections are what Pres. Obama was referring to when he mentioned "our most important traditions and values as a nation." Is his statement that he will not use the new powers the law gives him sufficiently reassuring?
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