Seven ways for an American citizen to get detained indefinitely

This article at Huffpo summarizes seven ways for an American citizen to get detained indefinitely. These concerns are not made up out of thin air. They are based on positions taken by attorneys for Barack Obama's Department of Justice during the litigation brought by author Chris Hedges and others. Here is Hedges' recap of why he got involved with the suit:

In January, attorneys Carl Mayer and Bruce Afran asked me to be the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit against President Barack Obama and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta that challenged the harsh provisions of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). We filed the lawsuit, worked for hours on the affidavits, carried out the tedious depositions, prepared the case and went to trial because we did not want to be passive in the face of another egregious assault on basic civil liberties, because resistance is a moral imperative, and because, at the very least, we hoped we could draw attention to the injustice of the law. None of us thought we would win. But every once in a while the gods smile on the damned.

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Change.org – a way to get traction for your favorite cause

Change.org is a way to get your favorite cause off the ground. Here is the mission of Change.org:

Every day, across the world, people like you start campaigns on Change.org to fight for issues they care about — and the Change.org team works to mobilize people to help them win. We believe that building momentum for social change globally means empowering citizen activists locally. That's why anyone, anywhere — from Chicago to Cape Town – can start their own grassroots campaign for change using our organizing platform. Your campaign can be about anything. From supporting curbside recycling programs to fighting wrongful deportation to protecting against anti-gay bullying, Change.org members start campaigns around thousands of different issues. To start your own campaign, just click here. Our mission is to build an international network of people empowered to fight for what's right locally, nationally, and globally. We hope you'll join us.
Change.org is not all talk. The website lists a long strong of successful causes that germinated at the site.

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Businesses souring on arbitration

The website Arbitration Nation has reported on the cognitive dissonance experienced by businesses when it comes to arbitration of commercial disputes. Based on a new survey, only 60% of companies arbitrated commercial disputes in 2011, compared to 85% in 1997. Why aren't businesses clamoring to arbitrate their disputes with other businesses?

The most common reasons given by survey respondents (general counsel and senior corporate lawyers) for not using arbitration included: the difficulty of appeal, the perception that arbitrators tend to compromise, the concern that arbitrators may not follow the law, a lack of confidence in neutrals, and high costs of arbitration. The study, conducted through Cornell’s Survey Research Institute, was co-sponsored by Pepperdine’s Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution, Cornell University, and the International Institute for Conflict Prevention & Resolution (CPR). (Its results are not currently available on-line.)
Arbitration Nation noted that while businesses are increasingly avoiding arbitration, the United States Supreme Court is making it more making it increasingly difficult to avoid the application of harsh arbitration contracts. Of course, most of the new court holdings enforcing pre-dispute mandatory arbitration clauses victimize non-businesses, such as consumers, employees and victims of civil rights abuses. Arbitration Nation links to a new article by Thomas Stipanowich that proposes a rating and ranking system for arbitration processes. We already have ample evidence exempt these group from mandatory arbitration. It is palpably clear that big businesses are using mandatory arbitration to take advantage of consumers, employees and victims of civil rights abuses, using their disparate bargaining power. They are using "arbitration" as a method of gaining immunity for their illegal actions. They are doing this, even as they vote with their feet that they don't like arbitration for themselves. Instead of gathering more data, we completely carve out consumers, employees and civil rights plaintiffs from being required to arbitrate. Sure, give them the option of arbitrating a case, but only after a dispute has arisen; never force them into mandatory, binding, pre-dispute arbitration. What I have just described is the approach of the Arbitration Fairness Act.

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Mitt Romney earns $21M, pays 13% in taxes

Robert Reich argues that it is grossly unfair that Mitt Romney earns $21M, but pays only 13% in taxes. He argues that many private-equity, hedge-fund, and pension-fund managers are often playing "con games" that screw the American taxpayers. He offers several solutions:

1. Don't allow private-equity managers to treat their income as capital gains, taxed at 15 percent. Treat this income as ordinary income. 2. Hold them to a "due diligence" standard, so the Pension Guaranty Corporation can claw back bonuses. 3. Raise the capital-gains rate to match the tax rate on ordinary income. 4. Resurrect Glass-Steagall.

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The Other Sides

Let’s imagine the conflict known as the Civil War. It had been brewing since before the Constitution was ratified. The issues were marrow deep in American society, so much so that any attempt to address the issue of slavery was, in effect, a deal breaker for the new nation. The South made it abundantly clear that any action on the part of the North to write into the new guiding document the idea that black slaves were somehow deserving of the liberty being claimed for their white owners—and thereby signaling the end of slavery among the Thirteen Colonies—would be met with absolute refusal to play. Had the reformers, exemplified by the likes of Benjamin Franklin, tried to assert any kind of racial equality at the time, the United States would have been stillborn. Instead, they put a time limit into the document—20 years—which forbade the topic from even being discussed in Congress until that later year, at which time, presumably, the issue would come to the floor for some kind of resolution. History shows that every such attempt was met with denunciations by southern members of Congress and often with threats of secession—which by then were illegal. Make no mistake, as some revisionists might have you believe, secession was not an option and everyone who voted to ratify the Constitution knew it. Contrary to popular mythology, the original 13 states locked themselves together permanently. [More . . . ]

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