By Sam Milgrom, Washington Legislative Office at 2:57pm
Earlier this month, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) made it clear that significant changes to the detention provisions in the Defense Authorization bill are in order. In a letter to Senators Carl Levin (D-MI) and John McCain (R-AZ), Reid told the Chairman and Ranking Member of the Senate Armed Services Committee to fix the detention provisions in "S.1253" – the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012 (NDAA), a must-pass piece of legislation. Reid's letter states that he does not intend to bring the bill to the Senate floor until sections 1031, 1032, and 1033 are changed.
By Sam Milgrom, Washington Legislative Office at 5:11pm
Former Vice President Dick Cheney is busy promoting his new book. The take-home message appears to be: He is not sorry for the torture and abuse that took place during the Bush administration.
By Sam Milgrom, Washington Legislative Office at 5:12pm
Hooray! With your help, we prevented the Senate from authorizing the president to engage in worldwide war.
For months, we have been pushing to prevent Congress from passing legislation that would give this president (and any of his successors) the authority to engage our country in a worldwide war without a defined enemy.
A couple of weeks ago, the Senate Armed Services Committee passed its version of the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2012 (NDAA), H.R. 1253. The committee recently released the official language — and the worldwide war authority provision was nowhere to be found!
By Sam Milgrom, Washington Legislative Office at 10:57am
One thing is clear after the House of Representatives considered two measures regarding military action in Libya last Friday — the president does not have authority to take the United States to war there.
In March, we wrote to members of Congress to urge them to assert their role under the Constitution to decide whether or not the American military can be used in Libya. And we later wrote to the president himself urging him not to violate both the Constitution and the War Powers Act. After more than three months of American planes and drones in Libya, a presidential violation of the Constitution and the War Powers Act and a Congress that was too nervous to actually vote on anything, the House finally stepped up to the plate and asserted its constitutional authority to decide whether the country's military should be in Libya.
By Sam Milgrom, Washington Legislative Office at 5:52pm
The House just passed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), including a provision to authorize worldwide war, which has no expiration date and will allow this president — and any future president — to go to war anywhere in the world, at any time, without further congressional authorization. The new authorization wouldn’t even require the president to show any threat to the national security of the United States. The American military could become the world’s cop, and could be sent into harm’s way almost anywhere and everywhere around the globe.
The New York Times ran an editorial today that highlights the lunacy under which many members of Congress are operating as they look to authorize worldwide war. Or as the New York Times puts it, “A Conflict Without End”:
