He signed it. We’ll fight it. {ACLU}

[suffragette]

32. Some of our Congress members listened

Jim McDermott did and I appreciate that and I continue to appreciate and support him:

http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2011/12/20/mcdermott-on-ndaa-were-stuck-with-it

This business of giving the president the right to detain people indefinitely without review erodes what we as Americans say we are.

So I’m very concerned that we do it, and we don’t even recognize we’re doing it. That’s the thing that’s the problem for me. People just sort of don’t notice that this is happening because it isn’t happening to them. Yet, we have had already a number of people where it’s pretty clear they were picked up and abused by the system and taken away under renditions, they’ve been taken to other countries and tortured and all of this has happened. So when I see a piece of legislation like this, I look at it very carefully. And my view was that this was a bad piece of legislation.

You voted against this act, but there wasn't anyone else in the Washington State delegation who voted "No" along with you. What do you make of that?

Well, you know, we’re all elected and we do what we think is best for the people that we represent. I can’t speak for anybody else. But it’s hard for me to understand how people would not see this. I do know that Congressman Adam Smith worked very hard to try and change this. In fact, he and I had a conversation about this and he was trying to convince me that it was not something I should worry about because it didn’t do what people said it did. Well, I remain unconvinced, and I think there’s an awful lot of people like me, very substantive people who have looked very carefully at this, and that proves to me that in fact it does do some things, but other things it’s unclear.