Jonathan Easley: Ron Paul says Defense Bill assures Descent into Totalitarianism!i

GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul warned that the National Defense Authorization Act, which was passed by Congress this month, will accelerate the country's "slip into tyranny" and virtually assures "our descent into totalitarianism." "The founders wanted to set a high bar for the government to over -come in order to deprive an individual of life or liberty," Paul, the libertarian congressman from Texas, said Monday in a weekly phone message to supporter. "To lower that bar is to endanger everyone. When the bar is low enough to include political enemies, our descent into totalitarianism is virtually assured. The Patriot Act, as bad as its violations against the Fourth Amendment was, was just one step down the slippery slope. The recently passed National Defense Authorization Act continues that slip into tyranny, and in fact, accelerates it significantly." The NDAA is the nearly $670 billion defense bill that covers the military budget, and funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. One controversial provision  mandates the detention of terror suspects, and reaffirms the administration's authority to detain those suspected of having ties to terrorist organizations. "The Fifth Amendment is about much more than the right to remain silent in the face of government questioning," Paul continued. "It contains very basic and very critical stipulations about the due process of law. The government cannot imprison a person for no reason, and with no evidence presented, and without access to legal council. The danger of the NDAA is its alarmingly vague, undefined criteria for who can be indefinitely detained by the US government without trial."