It's funny to read ongoing comments on NDAA news stories.

Right wingers blame it on Obama (and inevitably say "Ron Paul 2012"...), and left wingers blame it on back room laws written with John McCain.

The simple truth is that Congress does have the right and duty to pass laws to protect us, and they are attempting to do that in light of battles that our Founding Fathers couldn't have imagined. They have though, with the (un) Patriot Act and other law, stepped far over the line of law and into unConstitutional abridgments of freedom.

We have decades - in fact centuries - of experience fighting terrorists on our soil. Shay's Rebellion, Anarchists, (imagined) Commies, cross burning Klansmen, Weatherman bombings, armed hijackers in the '70s, abortion clinic bombers, etc. Existing law has kept the United States as an unlikely place to be the victim of a terrorist attack.

Every chip from our constitutional protections of rights to justice, equal treatment, etc., takes us further from the free nation we aspire to be.

Please, President Obama, Senators and Congressional Representatives, do not let the NDAA pass with provisions to declare our land as a battleground and our people as enemy combatants.