The Due Process Guarantee Act (S. 2003) is a bill that was introduced last year by Sen. Dianne Feinstein and colleagues to explicitly prohibit the indefinite detention without trial of United States citizens who are apprehended within the United States on suspicion of terrorism.
The bill was crafted due to a residual ambiguity in last year’s defense authorization act that seemed to leave it an open question as to whether Americans could be so detained or not.
The Due Process Guarantee Act has not progressed to a vote in the House or the Senate. But the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on it last February 29. The full record of that hearing has recently been published.
The full hearing volume presents some new material including answers to questions for the record provided by Steven Bradbury, the former head of the Bush Administration Office of Legal Counsel. It also includes a flinty exchange of letters between Mr. Bradbury and Sen. Al Franken, who said that Mr. Bradbury was unsuited to be be a witness before the Committee because of his “contemptible” legal advice regarding enhanced interrogation during the Bush years.
Further background related to the subject matter of the hearing can be found in Detention of U.S. Persons as Enemy Belligerents by Jennifer K. Elsea of the Congressional Research Service.
Satellite imagery of RAF Lakenheath reveals new construction of a security perimeter around ten protective aircraft shelters in the designated nuclear area, the latest measure in a series of upgrades as the base prepares for the ability to store U.S. nuclear weapons.
It will take consistent leadership and action to navigate the complex dangers in the region and to avoid what many analysts considered to be an increasingly possible outcome, a nuclear conflict in East Asia.
Getting into a shutdown is the easy part, getting out is much harder. Both sides will be looking to pin responsibility on each other, and the court of public opinion will have a major role to play as to who has the most leverage for getting us out.
How the United States responds to China’s nuclear buildup will shape the global nuclear balance for the rest of the century.