Could America Become a Presidential Military Dictatorship?

Bob Bauman
Legal Counsel for The Sovereign Society
March 17, 2010

I voted for John McCain for president, (did I have a choice?), but I’m wondering whether the senior senator from Arizona has taken leave of his constitutional senses.

Ten days ago, McCain and his might-have-been 2008 vice presidential candidate, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Ct), introduced a bill entitled the “Enemy Belligerent, Interrogation, Detention, and Prosecution Act of 2010.”

A close reading of the bill suggests it would allow the U.S. military to detain U.S. citizens without trial indefinitely in the United States based on suspected activity. Read the bill here and then continue reading…

The bill sets out a comprehensive policy for the detention, interrogation and trial of suspected enemy belligerents who are believed to have engaged in hostilities against the United States. It does so by requiring these individuals to be held in military custody, interrogated for their intelligence value and not provided with a Miranda warning.

But the bill makes no distinction between “U.S. persons,” (defined as green card holders or U.S. citizens) and non-U.S. persons. Any of them (of us) could be arrested by the military!