Ryan Price's Soapbox

January 3rd 2012 should be remembered for the day that our President ; The man who swore to uphold the Constitutional rights of the US people and everything this country stands, went back on his word and his oath and on that day, signed the NDAA into law. For those who don’t understand what the NDAA is, it basically permits the indefinite detention of people. After condemning the Bush Administration for such power grabs – Patriot Act comes to mind – Obama takes the biggest grab possible and wants to permit the indefinite or in his words ‘prolonged’ detention without charges, without any trail or evidence of any wrong doing. The threat he says makes this law necessary – there are people plotting to take American lives a year from now, five years from now, ten years from now. So for actions that haven’t even been taken yet – we’re going to detain people for long periods of time?

A famous quote comes to mind from Benjamin Franklin -

Those who would sacrifice freedom for security deserve neither

Since the attacks on September 11th we have continued to give our freedoms up for the thought of security which for all intents and purposes is not 100% flawless. As our previous president has stated: “The enemy only has to get lucky once, we must be right 100% of the time”. I’m sorry but this logically is not possible, unless we want to become a police state which we have obviously continued taking steps in that direction. The Patriot Act got some pretty important extensions back in may that appear to have gone unnoticed. The measure adds four years to the legal life of roving wiretaps, authorized for a person rather than a communications line or device; court-ordered searches of business records; and surveillance of non-American "lone wolf" suspects without confirmed ties to terrorist groups. Think about it – prolonged detention…at what point are we going to start righting for our rights or do we simply wait until they are all gone when it’s too late to do anything.