Recently, there has been a victory and a defeat regarding the indefinite detention provision of the Fiscal Year (FY)2012 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Chris Hedges meets with and writes stories about terrorists and believes the indefinite detention provision of NDAA could allow him to be detained. Hedges filed a lawsuit against President Obama and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta claiming the provision, as applied, violates the 1st and 5th Amendments. The Judge asked the federal attorneys a crucial question, “are you telling me that no US citizen can be detained under 1021 (of the NDAA)?” A specific denial would have ended Hedges’ case, the Federal attorneys failed to answer directly.

DownsizeDC – an advocacy group seeking to “to foster human progress by reducing State coercion” – filed the only amicus brief in the case and reports, “The Judge agreed with two of our main arguments. We said the new law is…

• Illegally vague. The Judge said there has to be a precise definition of who is subject to the law, and this law fails.
• Unfair, because it subjects people to detention even when they had no intent to cause harm or knowledge that they were risking such detention.”

U.S. District Judge Katherine B. Forrest not only gave Hedges standing to challenge the law, she also issued an injunction to halt the legalized kidnappings! see more…

I love me the blogosphere. It is a fantastic thing. Blogs gave us the first chance to get out from under the mainstream media. They provide an incredible opportunity to connect with like minded people and get the information that you want. I am committed to the medium and hope to continue to produce in it. They have a downfall as well though. James Lileks has talked about the concept of “non-contiguous information streams”. Blogs, and the increasingly fragmented cable news market, allowed people to get the information they wanted, and ONLY the information they wanted, to the exclusion of all other information. This made it easier for otherwise smart people to maintain some really silly ideas. On the left, it convinced people that the run up to the 2004 election was a really good time for a gay marriage push. On the right, it tragically maintains the idea that we need a bigger defense budget to deal with a bunch of fanatical Islamist peasants in tents than we needed to deal with Hitler or the Soviet Union.

Twitter, Tumblr and Facebook are now dramatically more important than the blogosphere. Pundits who used to maintain well thought out blogs, are devoting more of their time to these other services. It is a bit of a tragedy for those of us who remember the vibrancy of thought and significance that blogs once had. But, crucially, these systems avoid the problem described above. By expressing yourself on Twitter, and especially on Facebook, you are getting out of the echo chamber. see more…

President Obama and presumed GOP Presidential nominee Mitt Romney have both made public statements about marriage recently. Obama claims that his views have evolved over the years and told ABC News, “At a certain point, I’ve just concluded, that for me, personally, it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same-sex couples should be able to get married.” Obama explained he was stating his personal opinion and supports the right of the states to make their own decisions. Romney reiterated his stance that marriage is between one man and one woman. As Governor of Massachusetts, Romney said, “I agree with 3,000 years of recorded history. Marriage is an institution between a man and a woman.”

Romney’s position may be consistent, however it is not historically accurate. Until recently, consensual polygamy was a fairly common and accepted practice, and is still common in some parts of the world. Which meant that marriage could be a man and multiple women, a woman and multiple men or multiple men and multiple women. Additionally, Romney’s position – and to a certain extent Obama’s position – implies that governments have been involved in marriage for nearly 3,000 years. This is not true. Daniel Waechter of PrivatizeMarriage.org writes, “marriage licenses have only existed on any significant scale since 1929. No one in the US before that was required to have a marriage license in order to practice their fundamental right to marry.”

Historically marriage has been handled by churches, not government. Jesse Kline of the National Post writes, “the central question… is whether the state should be dictating the domestic arrangements of consenting adults.”

Getting government out of the business of issuing – and in most case “requiring”– a marriage license will be a challenge because government doesn’t like giving up power it has, nor does government like losing revenue sources once obtained. Providing marriage licenses is big business for the state. On average, 2.3 million couples are married per year in the United States, with the average marriage license costing $33.74; that provides a steady stream of income (roughly $77.6 million) for those who want control over your life.

People have become too accepting of government licensing and regulation. If you don’t want government regulating who you can share Thanksgiving dinner with, if/where you attend church or who you can date; why then are you willing to accept regulations on your committed relationships?