Slippery Slopes

If you’ve ever seen footage of a volcanic eruption, you’ll know how terrifying and spectacular it is. Fire and brimstone raining down a mountainside seemingly at random, eroding the current topography. After the eruptions have died down, lava continues to flow for some time. As it cools, it slows down while almost imperceptibly continuing on its journey. While not as spectacular, it can build new land masses. At this point, its pushing, prodding progress won’t be complete until sometimes years have passed. The end result is something new, something solid, with a look that most would probably not have anticipated.

Think about this metaphor when you think of legislation. When laws are passed, sometimes there is spectacle until the next news cycle and it recedes from public thought. Sometimes it will be passed quietly in the night, with scarcely anyone realizing it. Rare would be the perfect legislation, at least in the mind of the original author. There are tradeoffs to be made to garner support. Back-room dealings, or horse-trading as its best. And once in awhile you’ll find one that exemplifies the best, or the worst, that Congress has to offer.

Today’s example is the just-signed National Defense Authorization Act. This act, like so much of the sausage-making that is Congress, appears to meld the useful with the dangerous.

Perhaps you know a Constitutional lawyer who can make sense of this. Most of us can only grasp what is written and cannot see the ramifications, but maybe this can give us a starting point.

The good points include such things as funding our military. Few would argue (although some do) that this open-ended funding has little to do with actually protecting our country and its citizens. But as they say, the devil is in the details.

Included in this legislation are such things as Defense Department health-care costs, military modernization, new economic sanctions against Iran, among others. But there are provisions under a scary-sounding title “Counter Terrorism” that are drawing particular wrath from a variety of individuals and groups. Why? Because the legislation does or doesn’t (your choice) provide for Presidential authorization to imprison American citizens without due process. That means, potentially, no charges, no habeas corpus, no trial. And this includes, possibly, the ability for the US Military to be the cops in these situations. And the right to ship said citizens to other countries where the term civil liberty is an oxymoron.

In an Orwellian turn of phrase, this president insists that his administration will not cotton to actually doing the deeds. Small comfort there, seeing as Mr. Obama ‘held his nose’ while signing the legislation into law. “The fact that I support this bill as a whole does not mean I agree with everything in it,” the president said. But now the fact is that it IS the law now. And it can be, and will be, interpreted however the administration deems expeditious at the time. After all, it’s easier to ask forgiveness than for permission.

Now if you take this president at his word, perhaps as long as he is president there’s nothing to fear. But his replacement? Who knows? And those around them? After all, even Nixon likely didn’t know everything his people did on his behalf.

They say politics makes strange bedfellows. This is a good example of it. Groups such as the ACLU are up in arms over this, which you would expect. But so is Ron Paul. That makes sense from the standpoint of being Libertarian, but it does seem strange since much of their respective agendas cannot be in synch.

So here are some thoughts to ponder as we sort out the net result of this new law.
1) Has anyone got a crystal ball? After all, there will be unintended consequences to this act, for better or worse. It’s inevitable.
2) Would it make sense to stop legislating in bulk? While this law may not quite be the defining example of omnibus legislation, too many times bills are piggybacked with others. This way unpopular, or poison-pill bills can get passed because the bill it’s attached to will pass easily. For example, let’s say you want to build a bridge to nowhere. Attach the authorization for that project to something that will pass, such as creating National Walrus Appreciation Day.
3) And the big one: Can you follow the slow lava crawl of erosion of civil liberties? Will the new landmass built by that same lava fundamentally change our rights under the Constitution? Ever since 9/11, we have seen incremental, almost imperceptible degradations in our ability to live our lives free from Government interference. Now, if you mention the words terrorist, bomb, assassination, jihad, bio-warfare, or such over the phone it would not be a surprise to hear a knock on your door. Paranoid? Maybe. But totalitarian states start in such a manner, with the gradual erosion. After all, if you don’t squawk at the first baby step, why would you squawk at the next one? It’s only changed a little.

Bottom line is that this law may not spell the end of our liberties as we know them. But the next one might.