Bill HR1540, the NDAA for 2012 has gone through many revisions as it came from the Senate, and snaked it’s way through the House and soon to land on the President’s desk for his signature. The biggest issue with this bill has been the sections 1031 and 1032, which deal with “Detainee Matters” and the ACLU got really bent out of shape when people came to the conclusion that these sections enabled the government to suspend Posse Comitatus and indefinitely detain American Citizens.

This of course is a huge red-button issue. Nobody wants their rights trampled on and even the whiff of this is enough to enrage the citizenry. I have gone to OpenCongress.com and looked up the bill that is being discussed. HR 1540. I then went to the THOMAS site at the Library of Congress and the bill as it is ready for the President’s signature has changed the section numbers of these two parts that upset people. Instead of 1031 and 1032, the new sections are 1021 and 1022.

People are alarmed at this bill and I can tell you that I have read this bill and these two sections and there are two parts, here’s the part for 1021:

(e) AUTHORITIES.—Nothing in this section shall be construed
to affect existing law or authorities relating to the detention of
United States citizens, lawful resident aliens of the United States,
or any other persons who are captured or arrested in the United
States.

And then here’s the part for 1022:

(b) APPLICABILITY TO UNITED STATES CITIZENS AND LAWFUL
RESIDENT ALIENS.—
(1) UNITED STATES CITIZENS.—The requirement to detain
a person in military custody under this section does not extend
to citizens of the United States.

And I’ve looked over this bill and can’t find loopholes that mean that US Citizens can be indefinitely detained at all! The bill clearly states in both sections that nothing in either section applies to US Citizens!

So does it matter if the President Vetoes this bill? No. It doesn’t. We are protected by these two sections. The people who claim that we are in peril need to point where in the bill these two paragraphs no longer mean what I think they do when I read them.

If nobody can produce text proof that this bill is dangerous to my civil rights then I insist that people STFU about it!