As mentioned in Friday’s feature article about the Feinstein-Lee Amendment by Tenth Amendment Center Legal Analyst Blake Filippi, it did absolutely nothing to rectify the loss of rights Americans faced from the indefinite detention provisions in the 2012 NDAA that we are working to nullify throughout the country. However, Senator Mike Lee disagrees about the effectiveness of the amendment and is using quite a bizarre rationale to defend it.
Lee released a press release on Friday in an attempt to clarify concerns with the Feinstein-Lee Amendment (http://www.lee.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/blog?ID=142f4fe6-3446-4d1a-b82b-df9503db1952). He stated that the 2012 NDAA did not actually authorize indefinite detention of American citizens. If this is the case, then why even pass the amendment in the first place? If the 2012 NDAA was so hunky dory and didn’t authorize indefinite detention of Americans, why propose an amendment to supposedly ensure that Americans wouldn’t be indefinitely detained (which was assumed by everyone to be a response to last year’s Act)?
Lee could not deny that last year’s NDAA would be the ‘Act of Congress’ needed to allow for indefinite detention of Americans. In his press release, he did not quote the provisions of the NDAA which are cause to alarm and we are working to nullify. He omitted this information while assuring us that since a sentence within the Act said that the government would never use the powers that they usurped against citizens that we are supposed to have no fears and feel protected thanks to his work. I’m not buying that the same gang that extra-judicially kills American citizens is going to have restraint in their interpretation of the 2012 NDAA, as Mike Lee apparently does.
Libertarian Republican Congressman Justin Amash agrees with the Tenth Amendment Center interpretation of Lee’s amendment saying, “The Feinstein amendment to the 2013 NDAA does NOT protect you from indefinite detention without charge or trial. In fact, it explicitly permits such detention so long as the detention is approved by an Act of Congress . . . such as the 2012 NDAA.”
This just goes to show you that even people who do a good job of talking the talk might not always walk the walk. Whether he’s simply misguided in an attempt to protect the Constitution for Americans or he’s working to push something he knows will have no effect to quell push-back against federal power grabs, tea party Senator Mike Lee is doing no favors for liberty working with Senator Feinstein and releasing misleading press releases about it. It’s become more obvious than ever that federal bureaucrats aren’t going to protect our liberty, and we’re going to have to work at the state and local level to circumvent the D.C.vers through nullification to protect our sacred rights.
