Unconstitutionality of the 2012 NDAA

A federal judge granted a preliminary injunction late Wednesday to block provisions of the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act that would allow the military to indefinitely detain anyone it accuses of knowingly or unknowingly supporting terrorism.
     Signed by President Barack Obama on New Year's Eve, the 565-page NDAA contains a short paragraph, in statute 1021, letting the military detain anyone it suspects "substantially supported" al-Qaida, the Taliban or "associated forces." The indefinite detention would supposedly last until "the end of hostilities."
     In a 68-page ruling blocking this statute, U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest agreed that the statute failed to "pass constitutional muster" because its broad language could be used to quash political dissent.

Link

Wow. So it's the possibility of quashing political dissent that matters here? Not the way I would have gone with that...but whatever it takes, I guess.

It pains me beyond words to be on the same side as this crew:

...Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Noam Chomsky; Icelandic parliamentarian Birgitta Jonsdottir; Kai Wargalla, an organizer from Occupy London; and Alexa O'Brien, an organizer for the New York-based activist group U.S. Day of Rage.
     They call themselves the Freedom Seven.

(Ellsberg is in there, too, but he's cool...)

People who know a lot more about this than I do agree with the administration that there's nothing new here...though that just shifts the scary from the NDAA to whatever other thing permits indefinite detention until the end of the endless war.