Just after 5:00 p.m. Tuesday, the Senate did it again. By a vote of 98-0 (two senators abstained) lawmakers in the upper chamber approved the Fiscal Year 2013 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). Not a single senator objected to the passage once again of a law that purports to permit the president, supported by nothing more substantial than his own belief that the suspect poses a threat to national security, to deploy the U.S. military to arrest an American living in America.
As The New American reported, an amendment to the 2013 version of the defense spending bill passed by the Senate clarified the right to trial of “citizens and permanent legal residents” detained under the relevant sections of the revamped measure.
The bill will now be sent to a House-Senate conference committee. Despite differences in the versions of the measure passed by the two chambers, it is all but certain that the right words will be spoken in the right ears, and the president will once again sign this year’s NDAA into law. As one GOP staffer told The Hill, “While there are difference between the bills, there doesn’t appear to be anything that is insurmountable or will keep the conference committee from resolving the differences.”