Tuesday, May 22, 2007

"So Long As I'm the Dictator"

Bush is Getting All His Ducks in a Row

"If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier,
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just so long as I'm the dictator.
"
— George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., Dec. 19, 2000

The state of affairs that then President-elect Bush desired even before taking office has come one step closer with the new National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive. To provide the White House with your IP address click here to read the official May 9th press release. No? That's smart of you. OK then, click here for the story from Roguegovernment.com.
The directive released on May 9th, 2007 has gone almost unnoticed by the mainstream and alternative media.. ..In this directive, Bush declares that in the event of a “Catastrophic Emergency” the President will be entrusted with leading the activities to ensure constitutional government. The language in this directive would in effect make the President a dictator in the case of such an emergency..

..The language written in the directive is disturbing because it doesn’t say that the President will work with the other branches of government equally to ensure a constitutional government is protected. It says clearly that there will be a cooperative effort among the three branches that will be coordinated by the President. If the President is coordinating these efforts it effectively puts him in charge of every branch. The language in the directive is entirely Orwellian in nature making it seem that it is a cooperative effort between all three branches but than it says that the President is in charge of the cooperative effort.
Yeah, right. In Bushspeak, as we all know, 'cooperation' means you submit to Bush's will, without the slightest compromise from him. A situation only likely to get worse after the disastrous 'compromise' the legislative branch just made over funding Bush's continuing war crimes in Iraq.

What is he afraid of anyway, that his lapdog Attorney General Alberto Gonzales will suddenly learn to stand up on his hind legs? That the very Supreme Court that sElected him as pResident in Dec. 2000 (made even more subservient by two more Bush appointees) will suddenly apply the rule of law over their Republican blood oath of loyalty? Or that the spineless Democratic Congress and Senate will suddenly evolve from their current status as free floating jellyfish?

Truth be told, even without this directive Bush is a de facto dictator already. With the power to arbitrarily name anyone, citizen of the US or not, as an 'enemy combatant' and have that person or persons incarcerated indefinitely without charges, habeas corpus rights, or access to an attorney, what more power does he need? Never mind that this power is entirely unconstitutional, as long as the Supreme Court refuses to hear a defining case on the matter, and as long as the police and military continue to accept Bush's chain of command as valid, it doesn't matter, does it?
It is insane that this directive claims that its purpose is to define procedures to protect a working constitutional government when the very language in the document destroys what a working constitutional government is supposed to be. A working constitutional government contains a separation of powers between three equally powerful branches and this directive states that the executive branch has the power to coordinate the activities of the other branches. This directive is a clear violation of constitutional separation of powers and there should be angry protests from our legislators about this anti-American garbage that came from the President.
I agree, there should definitely be angry protests over this. But there weren't angry protests over the Military Commissions Act, there weren't angry protests over Guantanamo, nor Abu Ghraib, nor the rendition program. Not only are legislators silent over these matters, but so are the execrable Corporate Owned Media bobbleheads, and most lamentably the American public themselves. Personally, I'm getting sick and tired of hearing or reading the phrase, "clear violation of constitutional separation of powers" practically every day with no-one voicing anything like an effective expression of disapproval. I know, there's been some clamoring, but I said effective.

Perhaps some new tactics have to be contemplated. Maybe if voters in some strong progressive states agitated for secession it might have some effect. The fact is, the compact promised in the Constitution of the United States of America has been broken. All it would take is a declaration of that fact from a few state legislatures, and at the very least some of Bu$hCo™'s most egregious malfeasance could be, I don't know, at least mentioned by CNN reporters or something.

In related news that I find nearly as lamentable is this analysis of a Scotusblog report on the prospect of one branch of government that has already fallen into Republican hands in a way that the 2008 elections cannot reverse. The next President will choose two or three Supreme Court Justices. Yeah, that's right. So as useless as the Democrats are showing themselves to be, the American electorate has no choice but to put them into power in '08, the consequences of not doing so being too grave to contemplate.
For those of you not inclined to plumb the depths of Supreme Court analysis, a brief summary:

1-The next President will select two or three new Supreme Court justices in his or her first term.

2-All three will come from the Court’s liberal wing.

This is disturbing in the extreme. I always knew this election would be important to the makeup of the court because, to a certain extent, every election is, and also because Justice Stevens is 87. What I did not know is that Justice Souter, at 67 a relatively young Justice, is itching to retire.
Yet another compelling reason for progressives to look to any and all means to find a way to block Bu$hCo™ from their nefarious aims. It's like Dr. Evil was President Dr. Evil or something.

I don't know. I'm grasping at straws here. I'm that desperate to find some way out of this mess. One thing I fear to be a sad and frightening truth, if progressives in America don't find a way to get their ducks in a row, and soon, it may very well be too late.

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