Political Quotes

“I know Mr. Mori well. He is the national executive director of the Japanese American Citizens League, which is the oldest and largest Asian-American civil rights organization in the United States. The Japanese American Citizens League--or JACL as we would say--has been an active voice on the wrongful internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, and I believe it is worth listening to what they have observed from that painful history. The administration has threatened to veto this bill and said the following in its official Statement of Administration Policy: After a decade of settled jurisprudence on detention authority, Congress must be careful not to open a whole series of legal questions that will distract from our efforts to protect the country. Yet by allowing the military to detain U.S. citizens indefinitely, Congress would be opening a great number of serious legal questions, in my judgment. This amendment would restore the language that was in an earlier version of this bill that would have established a similar ban on the indefinite detention of U.S. citizens. It is also consistent with the way we have conducted the war on terror over the past 10 years. In cases where the United States has detained American citizens, including John Walker Lindh and Jose Padilla, they have eventually been transitioned from indefinite detention to the criminal justice system, and both have been convicted and are serving long prison sentences.…”