Detention Camps In The USA?

As if we didn't have enough to worry about these days, an corrupt congressman wants to establish military detention camps for US civilians on the mainland. Becky's analysis in the linked blog article is pretty much spot on.

Granted, this is still just a proposal, but this is the type of thing that must be fought tooth and nail. The wholesale abridgments of the Bill of Rights have been steadily increasing over the last century. This proposed atrocity would show that the promise of the Obama campaign couldn't be farther from the truth.

The fact is that this is one of the final pieces in the puzzle of how the US is setting up the potential for a military state. The original pieces were slow in coming but picked up dramatically with the "War On Drugs" which is really a war on liberty. An excellent example is here. I've covered the story before, but it really highlights the reason I talk about the war on drugs/liberty so much. The short version of the story is this: a small town mayor is minding his own business, innocent of any crime, when a SWAT team bursts into his house without identifying themselves, kills his dogs, handcuffs the entire family while screaming at them at gunpoint, ransacks the house, doesn't find anything, shrugs and leaves. They then refuse to apologize, officially clear them despite not one shred of evidence, comment on the story, or change policy. This is despite the fact that the only reason for the raid was a package of marijuana addressed to the couple, which was delivered by the police, who were investigating people mailing drugs to random innocent people. There is literally not one thing you can do to prevent this from happening to you.

After the war on drugs trampled the Constitution and Bill of Rights, the Bush administration added the practices of warrantless wiretapping and extrajudicial detention for American citizens. With the final additions of detention camps the following becomes a very real scenario:

A terrorist ships something to you, intending to intercept it. It is identified in transit. They issue a no-knock warrant for your arrest. They kick in your door, shoot your pets in front of your children, handcuff everyone in the house while not identifying themselves, screaming instructions. They then ransack your house, dumping out every drawer and overturning furniture, then take you out to a waiting van where you, for all intents and purposes, disappear. You are taken to a detention center where it is decided you are an enemy combatant. You get no lawyer. Your family may be told you are in custody at some point, perhaps not. You may be tortured, or near-tortured. At some point, you may or may not get a hearing at a military tribunal, however, the normal rules do not apply, you may not choose your lawyer, all sorts of usually prohibited evidence is allowed, and the standard of guilt is lower. Your family will not be informed until it is over. After that, you may be imprisoned for life, executed, or released.

The above, while unlikely, is technically possible with the law and practices stretched to their limit. When we don't stand up for our rights, they are taken from us. This is the reason all infringements of the Constitution must be publicized and fought against at the ballot box and in the court of public opinion.