President Obama gave an eloquent speech to the UN yesterday. Obama spoke about democracy, freedom on the First Amendment:

Our Constitution protects the right to practice free speech.

Here in the United States, countless publications provoke offense. Like me, the majority of Americans are Christian, and yet we do not ban blasphemy against our most sacred beliefs. As president of our country, and commander in chief of our military, I accept that people are going to call me awful things every day, and I will always defend their right to do so.

Americans have fought and died around the globe to protect the right of all people to express their views – even views that we profoundly disagree with. We do so not because we support hateful speech, but because our founders understood that without such protections, the capacity of each individual to express their own views and practice their own faith may be threatened.

We do so because in a diverse society, efforts to restrict speech can quickly become a tool to silence critics and oppress minorities. We do so because, given the power of faith in our lives, and the passion that religious differences can inflame, the strongest weapon against hateful speech is not repression, it is more speech – the voices of tolerance that rally against bigotry and blasphemy, and lift up the values of understanding and mutual respect.

He encouraged those with power to avoid the temptation to silence dissent:

In other words, true democracy, real freedom is hard work. Those in power have to resist the temptation to crack down on dissidents.

What do a retired Catholic Bishop, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, and a United Arab Emirates' newspaper commentator have in common? They are all critical of the government's unprecedented use of the Espionage Act to prosecute whistleblowers.

Yesterday, I wrote about a significant piece in the United Emirates' newspaper The National, which criticized the U.S. government's hypocrisy in declining to criminally prosecute government officials who authorized, orchestrated and committed torture during the G.W. Bush-era while prosecuting John Kiriakou – a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) whistleblower who helped expose torture – under the heavy-handed Espionage Act.

Yesterday, retired Catholic Bishop John McCarthy similarly criticized Kiriakou's prosecution:

Dear Lord, something is really out of balance here. Interrogators who tortured prisoners or the officials who gave the orders, the attorneys who authored the torture memos, CIA agents who destroyed the interrogation tapes have not been held professionally accountable, much less charged with crimes, but John Kiriakou is facing decades in prison for helping to expose torture.

The hypocrisy of Kiriakou's case is enough to find common ground between a retired Catholic Bishop and commentator for the UAE's newspaper, yet the U.S. is still doggedly pursuing Kiriakou using the archaic Espionage Act, a law meant to go after spies, not whistleblowers.

Bishop McCarthy also recognized the invaluable role of whistleblowers in governmental and private institutions, including within the Catholic Church.

Nevertheless, because of that weakness, sin and corruption abounds all around us in the corporate world, the government and sadly even the Church. Because of this, there is a need for people with integrity within these massive organizations and movements to have the courage to stand up, criticize and, if necessary, publically condemn evil, dishonesty, mismanagement, theft, etc. This is very hard to do because large organizations dont like any criticism, much less public criticism and they will often move against the complainer with a very heavy hand.

United Arab Emirates' English-language newspaper The National ran a significant piece by Peter Muir criticizing the U.S. government's hypocrisy in declining to criminally prosecute government officials who authorized, orchestrated and committed torture during the G.W. Bush-era while prosecuting John Kiriakou – a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) whistleblower who helped expose torture – under the heavy-handed Espionage Act.

If those responsible for torture - either committing the act, sanctioning it, providing dubious legal advice that encourages it or wilfully destroying evidence of it- are not held accountable, while those within the US government, like Kiriakou, who take a stand against it are persecuted, it may only be a matter of time before we once again see grinning soldiers shamelessly posing for souvenir photos with the shrink-wrapped remains of "enhanced interrogation" victims.

I've long pointed out that the government's war on whistleblowers (a.k.a. selective and record-breaking use of the Espionage Act against whistleblowers) has a tremendous chilling effect on potential national security whistleblowers, creates a terrible precedent for targeting and silencing jouranlists, and is a back-door way of creating an Official Secrets Act. Considering that a commentator for UAE's The National can grasp the dangerous consequences of letting the architects of torture off the hook while charging whistleblowers under the Espionage Act, the government ought to reconsider its attack on whistleblowers for one more reason.

There are dangers of the Obama administration's record-breaking six Espionage Act prosecutions beyond imprisonment for my clients like John Kiriakou and National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower Thomas Drake (before the case against Drake imploded). In light of the decision not to prosecute torturers or the architects of torture, the message the U.S. government's leak hypocrisy sends is that employees who break the law can get away with it while those who help expose government law-breaking risk criminal prosecution.

Late Monday, Second Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Raymond J. Lohier granted the government's request to put on hold District Judge Katharine Forrest's recent opinion in Hedges v. Obama permanently enjoining the indefinite detention provision in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).

Unsurprisingly, the government argued that Forrest's ruling compromised national security, specifically

saying that Judge Forrest’s ruling had gone beyond the new statute and jeopardized some of its existing authority to hold certain wartime prisoners under the 11-year-old Authorization for Use of Military Force against the perpetrators of the Sept. 11 attacks.

The government's emergency request to the Second Circuit (even after Forrest rejected one such request) signals that all the parties recognize that Hedges v. Obama raises high-stakes separation of powers issues. While Lohier granted only an interim stay until a panel of Second Circuit judges can hear the case on September 28, 2012, his ruling is indicative of a disturbing tendency that too many courts have exhibited since 9/11 - deferring to the government's claims of harm to national security at the expense of individual freedoms.

There are too many Judge Lohiers and not enough Judge Forrests. Forrest rightly broke the mold of deference to the Executive in her courageous and well-reasoned opinion permanently enjoining the NDAA's indefinite detention provision. In the words of the New York Times editorial board:

[Judge Forrest's] willingness to take constitutional claims seriously was a refreshing departure from too many other judges in cases involving national security.

Some key quotes from Forrest's must-read opinion:

The Washington Post has a dangerously misguided editorial strongly defending the Executive's right to indefinitely detain even U.S. citizens under the Section 1021(b)(2) of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) and criticizing Judge Katharine Forrest's recent opinion in Hedges v. Obama, which permanently enjoined Section 1021(b)(2)'s enforcement. WaPo mischaracterizes Section 1021(b)(2) of the NDAA as a well-reasoned compromise appropriately respectful of individual rights when in fact the NDAA grants the Executive branch broad, unchecked power to indefinitely detain Americans.

For those not following Hedges v. Obama, the lawsuit is a challenge to section 1021(b)(2) of the NDAA brought by

a group of writers, journalists, and activists whose work requires them to engage in writing, speech, and associational activities protected by the First Amendment. They have testified credibly to having an actual and reasonable fear that their activities will subject them to indefinite military detention pursuant to § 1021(b)(2).

WaPo accuses Judge Forrest of "judicial activism" - a stale accusation thrown out against any number of judges who have stood up to executive power. (Former Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren weathered constant accusations of "judicial activism" as his court consistently ruled for school desegregation).

Contrary to WaPo's cries of "judicial activism," Forrest was acting exactly as judges should act - as safeguards of individual constitutional rights. As the New York Times editorial board said:

The judge's willingness to take constitutional claims seriously was a refreshing departure from too many other judges in cases involving national security. If the government is unhappy with the ruling, it can largely blame its failure to adequately limit and define detention authority.

Forrest's 112-page opinion is thorough, well-reasoned, and brave.

Some key quotes from Forrest's must-read opinion:

Heedlessly to refuse to hear constitutional challenges to the Executive's conduct in the name of deference would be to abdicate this Court's responsibility to safeguard the rights it has sworn to uphold . . . Courts must safeguard core constitutional rights.

When squarely presented with an unavoidable constitutional question, courts are obliged to answer it.

Any period of detention (let alone years) for what could be an unconstitutional exercise of authority, finds no basis in the Constitution.

First Amendment rights are guaranteed by the Constitution and cannot be legislated away.

The public has a strong and undoubted interest in the clear preservation of First and Fifth Amendment rights.

Shortly after Forrest issued her opinion, the Obama administration requested a stay, a request Forrest sharply rebuked. The Obama administration has pledged to file an emergency stay request with the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.

Judge Forrest deserves credit for confronting and correctly deciding the constitutional question presented by indefinite detention of Americans. Indefinite detention without due process is antithetical to a democracy, no matter what spin the Executive or WaPo editorial board puts on it.

This post originally appeared on Radack's Daily Kos blog.

Jesselyn Radack is National Security & Human Rights Director for the Governent Accountability Project, the nation's leading whistleblower protection and advocacy organization.

Yesterday, the House of Representatives voted to re-authorize the 2008 FISA Amendments Act (FAA). The FAA Re-authorization represents the normalization of a domestic surveillance state.

The FAA was bad enough in 2008, when it "legalized" parts of the Bush warrantless wiretapping program and gave retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies that gave up customers' private data to the government, but at least it had a sunset. American Civil Liberties Union legislative counsel Michelle Richard said of the re-authorization:

Yet again, the House has rubberstamped a law so broad and vague that, despite its passage four years ago, we still have little idea how the government is using it.  

Despite the facts that:

1. the sunset provided Congress an opportunity to rethink the broad surveillance powers the Executive has repeatedly abused;
2. even Senators - like Ron Wyden (D-OR) - cannot get a straight answer from the intelligence community about how the law is being used against Americans; and
3. whistleblowers, like my client National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower William Binney, have risked everything to expose domestic spying, the House voted to further empower the Executive's already unprecedented surveillance powers.

The House was obviously not listening to the numerous warnings about continuing unchecked domestic surveillance programs from my clients – NSA whistleblowers William Binney, J. Kirk Wiebe, and Thomas Drake – all of whom were criminally investigated in retaliation for their disclosures. (Drake was prosecuted under the Espionage Act and faced decades in prison before the Justice Department's case against him collapsed in spectacular fashion days before trial.)