Law & Justice

• Now that Congress and the White House have turned their backs on the right to due process and trial by jury, the courts are the last line of defense against establishment of a gulag state. 
• Noam Chomsky | The Shredding of Our Constitutional Rights
• Chris Hedges on the NDAA

Chris Hedges, TruthDig

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December 23, 2012 | Over the past year I and other plaintiffs including Noam Chomsky and Daniel Ellsberg have pressed a lawsuit in the federal courts to nullify Section 1021(b)(2) of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). This egregious section, which permits the government to use the military to detain U.S. citizens, strip them of due process and hold them indefinitely in military detention centers, could have been easily fixed by Congress. The Senate and House had the opportunity this month to include in the 2013 version of the NDAA an unequivocal statement that all U.S. citizens would be exempt from 1021(b)(2), leaving the section to apply only to foreigners. But restoring due process for citizens was something the Republicans and the Democrats, along with the White House, refused to do. The fate of some of our most basic and important rights—ones enshrined in the Bill of Rights as well as the Fourth and Fifth amendments of the Constitution—will be decided in the next few months in the courts. If the courts fail us, a gulag state will be cemented into place.

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Related:

Noam Chomsky | The Shredding of Our Constitutional Rights, Part 2, Noam Chomsky,  Guardian UK,

• How the Magna Carta became a Minor Carta
• The Obama administration has perpetuated an assault on the foundations of traditional liberties
• Noam Chomsky | The Shredding of Our Constitutional Rights, Part 1

• Tomasky writes: "Wrapping opposition to same-sex marriage today or interracial marriage then in a religious blanket--or, in this case, a fancy jurisprudential one--is not okay. It was bigotry then, and it's bigtory now, pure and simple." 
• Does Clarence Thomas Care About Prosecutors Behaving Badly?

Michael Tomasky, the Daily Beast

Submitted by Evergreene Digest Contributing Editor Jim Fuller

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TPM's Sahil Kapur recalls the great man's reaction to the Lawrence v. Texas, ruling, as we reflect on the recent news that the Court will hear two gay-marriage cases:

In a landmark 2003 decision, the Court ruled that states may not outlaw sodomy among consenting adults of the same sex. The minority dissent in the 6-3 ruling in Lawrence v. Texas was authored by Justice Scalia, who argued that the Court’s reasoning effectively, if not explicitly, knocked down the legal basis for outlawing gay marriage.

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Related:

Does Clarence Thomas Care About Prosecutors Behaving Badly? Adam Serwer, Mother Jones

• The more prosecutors feel like they can get away with railroading defendants, the more they're likely to do it, and the more likely an innocent person is to be punished. The possibility isn't an abstract one.
• The prosecutors' behavior in the Smith case was so egregious that even Thomas' conservative colleagues were unwilling to join him this time around in upholding the original verdict.
• Clarence Thomas is not above the law