Amendment 1274 anyone??

An interesting bit fell into my email box this morning.

I receive email updates from various…um, I suppose you could say, “alternative” news sources.  Not that I really depend on them for any kind of hardcore journalism but more as an exercise in gathering writing prompts and feeding my insatiable appetite for the weird.  Today, I read about a Senate bill called Amendment No. 1274. 

The source was “Prison Planet,” a site maintained by conspiracy theorist, Alex Jones.  I find this guy entertaining.  Anyway, the story goes that on the evening of December 1^st, the U.S. Senate attempted to pass an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act that would allow the U.S. military to detain American citizens even if said detainees had been found not guilty by trial.  Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) brought a halt to the proceedings by calling for a last-minute roll call vote.  The amendment was struck down by a vote of 41-59, a margin that “Prison Planet” calls “worryingly narrow.”

But that’s just it.  As I’ve searched in an effort to locate any source of corroboration for this news story, the sites that come back all have names like “Propaganda Matrix,” “Right Face,” and of course, “Prison Planet.”  There is a conspicuous absence…that I can tell anyway…of coverage from news sources with names such as CNN, ABC, MSNBC, and the like.  Why is this?  Is this evidence of mainstream media numbing our minds as part of the takeover conspiracy or has the vote on and the contents of Amendment No. 1274 been distorted and exaggerated? 

I can imagine that the language in the Senate bill did say something along the lines of what has been alleged.  It wouldn’t surprise me that such a measure was considered in order to deal American citizens who openly fight for terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda.  As U.S. citizens, they are technically entitled to due process but the situation is an entirely different can of tuna from your run-of-the-mill criminal case.  Conspiracy theorists have argued that this kind of legislation is a slippery slope and that such measures could be employed by the unscrupulous to establish an autocratic state here in the U.S. 

Tough to see the forest for the frondescence isn’t it?  I would sincerely hope that such a vote by our political leaders on such legislation would make more news than it has.  Then again, knowing the mentality of the average American and corporate media’s need to make money from them…well, I can’t say that it would surprise me if such measures did get passed one day and we would be none the wiser.  Why?  Because we just didn’t care.

I always point to my paraphrased quote from Thomas Jefferson: “Democracy takes two things: education and participation.” 

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