“It is a sad reality that in the ten years since the first detainees were brought to Guantanamo Bay not a single one has been fully tried or convicted of any crime. Despite this, the Government has fought to deny detainees the ability to challenge their indefinite detentions through habeas proceedings.” ~U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth

168 Muslims sit behind bars in Cuba. The courts have cleared more than 50% for immediate release. Yet, there they sit.

Every day for the past 11 years — over repeated objections of two presidents and their attendant party faithful — Muslim prisoners have been knocking on the Federal courthouse door, thereby indirectly laboring to ensure that your Bill of Rights remains intact.

They call them “detainees” because “prisoners” have rights. We call that “good lawyering.”

On September 18, 2001, President Bush signed a law authorizing the individual who happens to be president to kill citizens of the United States with Hellfire Missiles. The law does this by placing no limits on what a president can do once he yells: “Terrorist!”

Given the unlimited authority Congress handed presidents, it should come as no surprise that today the President actually kills citizens with Hellfire Missiles, and that he reserves the right — under the same law — to do the same on U.S. soil.

It should come as no surprise that one of these presidential missiles incinerated a 16 year old boy from Denver. It should come as no surprise that no speaker at either convention mentioned the name: Abdulrahman Awlaki. It should come as no surprise that when a reporter cornered the President in Ohio on Thursday and was like: “WTF with assassinating citizens?!” (paraphrasing) — the President lied.

It doesn’t get anymore transparent than that.

The President doesn’t want you to know that:

• he can kill you
• he can fit you with an ankle bracelet
• he doesn’t want you to know — Gun Nut Alert — that he can take your guns
• he can order the Secretary of the Treasury to freeze your assets
• his defense lawyer is in Federal court in New York likening you — an innocent citizen — to a Nazi.

But, this is the President we’re going to have until January 2017, so I’m going to be writing about for the benefit of the nation’s two or three remaining civil libertarians.

Politicians like their citizens stupid. They like you like Todd Akin likes his women — helpless. They want you reciting the Lord’s Prayer and the Pledge of Allegiance; not the First Amendment. They don’t want you to know that a subset of the 1,000 or so Federal judges scattered across America, actually await the opportunity to push the Reset Button.

The Homeland Battlefield Provision is what you get when you look to politicians for the love you never had from your father. But, when you’re that needy — that co-dependent — it should come as no surprise when Daddy no longer guarantees you a grand jury or an indictment or a lawyer or Miranda or a judge or a trial or discovery or cross-examination or privacy or property rights.

That’s how is was in the United Stats from 1776-1791. No Bill of Rights. Those were fifteen bad years. And, that’s exactly where we are today. The President can apply the Bill of Rights, or not. In other words, no rule of law.

The New York Times really got its pen out today:

“Judge Lambert is completely right in his insistence that the administration respect the rule of law.”

I am so moved.

It would have been nice for the Times to mention Abdulrahman Awlaki in the 7,000 word brochure it published advertising the President’s Assassination Program. See, Secret Kill List Tests Obama’s Principles.

It’s about shaping your relationship with war, so that you never question the fact that war — in this case, the final war — is on you. If this is not the tipping point to awaken the citizenry — and it doesn’t seem to be — grab the SPAM, head for the hills and put a fork in the so-called “American Experiment.”

Against the foregoing absurd backdrop Chris Hedges is fighting back.

Earlier this year, Hedges filed a lawsuit against the United States, for the purpose of nullifying the Homeland Battlefield Provision of the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act, which specifically authorizes presidents to perpetually detain citizens of the United States — without trial — just like we do the Muslims in Guantanamo.

GTMO is nothing but a beta-site for U.S. citizens, and that’s all it’s ever been.

In Hedges, Benjamin Torrance, the President’s defense lawyer, has gone out of his way to ensure the court that while citizens may well be detained not “indefinitely,” but “perpetually,” under military authority, they are guaranteed access to habeas review.

Not “indefinite,” but “perpetual.” Isn’t that clever? Mr. and Mrs. Torrance must be so proud.

What the President’s lawyer never reveals, is that it his client who decides the terms and conditions under which you have access to legal advice, thereby reducing to zero the chance that any habeas review will be meaningful, even under the kangaroo rules governing military tribunals.

Now you know why they don’t have cameras in Federal courts. (What they really need are showers.)

Quick backstory: In 1995, I was released from Federal prison — no — not for stabbing an anonymous commenter.

When I was 28 — 25 years ago — I gave the bank a couple of tax returns that were not what they appeared to be and the judge gave me a three year timeout. I can’t say for sure whether I am the first citizen to serve time when his payments were current. All I can say is that I’ve been reading law for 25 years and it is possible.

Today I actually own my very own copy of the law, which I rent to the lawyers. God bless them, every one!

As a broke, bankrupt, high school graduate with a young family on welfare — representing myself — instead of doing 1,600 days as the Government proposed at sentencing, I won a couple of appeals and ended up serving 700 days on the installment plan; 15 months in, two years out pending further litigation (because, “yes” my original sentence was that unconstitutional) and then six months back in to serve what I like to call “the balance due.”

In all, I did time in five Federal prisons, including maximum security, due to a clerical error by the people in shipping and receiving.

Instead of working out in the gym, I worked out in the law library. Upon release, I had the opportunity to collaborate with F. Lee Bailey in a bank fraud case involving a functionally, illiterate defrocked bank president with an eighth grade education.

You need a license to cut hair. Turns out, any asshole can be a bank president.

The probation officer predictably forbid me to work on Federal criminal cases, even under the supervision of real attorneys and I filed suit. The judge did not issue the injunction as requested. However, from the bench, he told the United States to leave me alone and that was that.

Even with the protection of the Bill of Rights, it is a lifestyle choice to not plead guilty and do battle with the DOJ; largest law firm in the world. U.S. citizens amount to 5% of the world’s population. But, when aggregated, the 50 states and the Feds house 25% of the world’s prisoners. That’s still not lopsided enough for the Risk Management Industrial Complex.

The United States has unfortunately chosen to close ranks on the citizenry. If there is a less conspiratorial language to describe the situation, I am all ears. It is a fact, that three days after 9-11 your representatives permanently collapsed the legislative branch into the executive branch. Three days after 9-11 the vote was 518-1 to authorize presidents to kill you with a missile or whatever.

On New Year’s Eve, President Obama signed a law that says he can throw you in jail for up to — and including — forever without trial. The vote in the senate was 93-7, and in a total absence of any pretense, they called it “The Homeland Battlefield Provision.”

Doesn’t get anymore transparent than that.

The occasional willing judge is the only thing that stands between the citizenry and the strong executive presidents to become. On Thursday, Judge Lambert ripped into the President, noting that your First Amendment right to “access the courts means nothing without access to counsel.”

Duh.

Chris Hedges also found a willing judge, by the name of Katherine Forrest (an Obama appointee), who in May issued a preliminary injunction against the President, barring enforcement of the Homeland Battlefield Provision. The President’s response to the preliminary injunction is that he can lock you up anyway, under the 9.18 law he uses to kill citizens with missiles. His lawyer says the impact of the injunction on the actions of the President is “nil.”

And, he’s right — for now.

Every law is constitutional — no matter how unconstitutional — until a judge says otherwise. This is why every citizen and organization who directly relies on the First Amendment for their living — every preacher, every artist, every reporter, every author, every lawyer — needs to bury the Department of Justice with lawsuits of the sort Chris Hedges filed when he became the first citizen to attempt to end the Homeland Battlefield Provision, and of the sort I filed last year, when I became the first — and only — citizen to sue the United States for the purpose of ending our nation’s unconstitutional participation in the Libyan Civil War.

The only thing the politicians fear is a willing judge. Go find one. It’s change you can believe in.

CINCINNATI – Neither the DNC, the RNC, or other anti-civil liberties groups blinked when the President yesterday, falsely stated to an Ohio reporter that he — the President — had “never confirmed” news reports of Anwar Awlaki’s death.

THE TIMELINE

• April 14, 1865: Abraham Lincoln becomes the first President of the United States to be assassinated by an American citizen.

• September 11, 2001 (morning): Planes fly into the World Trade Center & The Pentagon

• September 11, 2001 (afternoon): Congress sings “God Bless America.”

• September 14, 2001: By a joint resolution vote of 518-1, your representatives pass Public Law 107-40 (Authorization To Use Military Force-VIDEO) which authorizes the individual who happens to be President to kill citizens of the United States.

• September 18, 2001: President Bush signs the bill into law.

• September 20, 2011: Anwar al-Awlaki becomes the first citizen of the United States to be assassinated by a President of the United States.

• October 15, 2001: Abdulrahman Awlaki — 16, from Denver, accused of nothing — becomes the second citizen of the United States to be assassinated by a President of the United States.

• October 25, 2011: The President of the United States goes on the Tonight Show, where he brags about the father, doesn’t mention the son, and — needless to say — Leno doesn’t ask.

JAY LENO: Can I ask you about taking out their top leadership, al-Awlaki, this guy, American-born terrorist? How important was he to al Qaeda?
THE PRESIDENT: We put so much pressure on al Qaeda in the Afghan/Pakistan region that their affiliates were actually becoming more of a threat to the United States. Awlaki was their head of external operations….we were able to remove him from the field. [VIDEO BELOW]

August 7, 2012 (yesterday): While campaigning in Ohio — a major league swing state — a local reporter asks the President about targeting citizens for death without trial. The President denies that he has ever publicly confirmed such prior assassinations.

BEN SWANN: The so-called presidential kill list that’s gotten a lot of attention — this list of folks who have been targeted for assassination — and on that list have been U.S. citizens who have not been afforded trial, including Anwar al-Awlaki. How do you, as President, or any president for that matter, regardless of party or person, utilize that power to assassinate even U.S. citizens?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, first of all, you’re basing this on reports in the news that have never been confirmed by me.

In June, Scott Pelley interviewed Secretary of Defense, Leon Panetta, who — echoing the plain language of the law — confirmed that it is the President who determines which citizens get a judge and jury and which citizens get a Hellfire Missile fired from a flying robot.

The clip (below) includes (i) the President under questioning yesterday in Ohio, (ii) the Secretary of Defense under questioning on 60 Minutes, and (iii) White House Secretary Jay Carney, under questioning by Jake Tapper of ABC News.

As I wrote yesterday, the foregoing law creates a conflict with the international law of war that caused the President to deploy Secretary of State Legal Advisor, Harold Koh to Uganda in June 1010, where Koh cajoled the International Criminal Court community into foregoing the adoption of a new crime called “act of aggression,” until January 2017 — the same month the President retires from politics.

As you watch these videos keep in mind that at the time of their incineration, neither Awlaki was on any battlefield, there was no imminent threat, and neither had been accused of killing anyone.

Young Awlaki has never been accused of anything.

The Supreme Court long ago ruled that citizens do not check their constitutional rights are the border. Period.

“At the beginning we reject the idea that when the United States acts against citizens abroad it can do so free of the Bill of Rights. The United States is entirely a creature of the Constitution.3 Its power and authority have no other source. It can only act in accordance with all the limitations imposed by the Constitution.4 When the Government reaches out to punish a citizen who is abroad, the shield which the Bill of Rights and other parts of the Constitution provide to protect his life and liberty should not be stripped away just because he happens to be in another land. This is not a novel concept. To the contrary, it is as old as government.” Reid v. Covert, 354 U.S. 1 (1957)