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NOTES FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION:
THE LATE GREAT PROBLEM!
A DEMOCRATIC DICTATORSHIP
Bush Anoints Himself as the Insurer of Constitutional Government in Emergency
May 18, 2007 By Matthew Rothschild
NOTES FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION:
THE LATE GREAT PROBLEM!
A DEMOCRATIC DICTATORSHIP
Bush Anoints Himself as the Insurer of Constitutional Government in Emergency
May 18, 2007 By Matthew Rothschild
With scarcely a mention in the mainstream media, President Bush has ordered up a plan for responding to a catastrophic attack.
In a new National Security Presidential Directive, Bush lays out his plans for dealing with a “catastrophic emergency.”
Under that plan, he entrusts himself with leading the entire federal government, not just the Executive Branch. And he gives himself the responsibility “for ensuring constitutional government.”
He laid this all out in a document entitled "National Security Presidential Directive/NSPD 51" and "Homeland Security Presidential Directive/HSPD-20."
The White House released it on May 9.
Other than a discussion on Daily Kos led off by a posting by Leo Fender, and a pro-forma notice in a couple of mainstream newspapers, this document has gone unremarked upon. NOT ANY MORE!
In a new National Security Presidential Directive, Bush lays out his plans for dealing with a “catastrophic emergency.”
Under that plan, he entrusts himself with leading the entire federal government, not just the Executive Branch. And he gives himself the responsibility “for ensuring constitutional government.”
He laid this all out in a document entitled "National Security Presidential Directive/NSPD 51" and "Homeland Security Presidential Directive/HSPD-20."
The White House released it on May 9.
Other than a discussion on Daily Kos led off by a posting by Leo Fender, and a pro-forma notice in a couple of mainstream newspapers, this document has gone unremarked upon. NOT ANY MORE!
Google Web Search (14,500)
Google News Search (Disappointing 9)
Google Web Search (Bush National Emergency Plan) (1,580,000)
The subject of the document is entitled “National Continuity Policy.”
It defines a “catastrophic emergency” as “any incident, regardless of location, that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the U.S. population, infrastructure, environment, economy, or government function.”
This could mean another 9/11, or another Katrina, or a major earthquake in California, I imagine, since it says it would include “localized acts of nature, accidents, and technological or attack-related emergencies.”
The document emphasizes the need to ensure “the continued function of our form of government under the Constitution, including the functioning of the three separate branches of government,” it states.
But it says flat out: “The President shall lead the activities of the Federal Government for ensuring constitutional government.”
The document waves at the need to work closely with the other two branches, saying there will be “a cooperative effort among the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of the Federal Government.” But this effort will be “coordinated by the President, as a matter of comity with respect to the legislative and judicial branches and with proper respect for the constitutional separation of powers.”
Among the efforts coordinated by the President would be ensuring the capability of the three branches of government to “provide for orderly succession” and “appropriate transition of leadership.”
The document designates a National Continuity Coordinator, who would be the Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism.
Currently holding that post is Frances Fragos Townsend.
She is required to develop a National Continuity Implementation Plan and submit it within 90 days.
As part of that plan, she is not only to devise procedures for the Executive Branch but also give guidance to “state, local, territorial, and tribal governments, and private sector owners and operators of critical infrastructure.”
The secretary of Homeland Security is also directed to develop planning guidance for “private sector critical infrastructure owners and operators,” as well as state, local, territorial, and tribal governments.
The document gives the Vice President a role in implementing the provisions of the contingency plans.
“This directive shall be implanted in a manner that is consistent with, and facilitates effective implementation of, provisions of the Constitution concerning succession to the Presidency or the exercise of its powers, and the Presidential Succession Act of 1947 (3 USC 19), with the consultation of the Vice President and, as appropriate, others involved.”
THE DOCUMENT ALSO CONTAINS “CLASSIFIED CONTINUITY ANNEXES.”
WELL HE TOLD AT LEAST THREE TIME HE WANTED TO BE DICTATOR AND NOW….
"You don't get everything you want. A dictatorship would be a lot easier." Describing what it's like to be governor of Texas. –George Bush-(Governing Magazine 7/98)
"I told all four that there are going to be some times where we don't agree with each other, but that's OK. If this were a dictatorship, it would be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator," Bush “JOKED”. -- CNN.com, December 18, 2000
"A dictatorship would be a heck of a lot easier, there's no question about it, " [Bush] said. -- Business Week, July 30, 2001
NOTES FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION:
THE WHITE HOUSE RELEASES ON NSPD-51 & HSPD-20 (UNCLASSIFIED PORTIONS) ESTABLISHES A BUSH DICTATORSHIP BY SIMPLE DECREE
Amidst all the discussion and debate about whether President Bush has violated the law by ordering the National Security Agency (NSA) to record telephone conversations, we must not overlook an important fact: the United States is now traveling in uncharted waters, ones in which the ruler of the nation is exercising omnipotent power over the American people. A more appropriate word would be one that offends some Americans when it is applied to their system of government: dictatorship. But as uncomfortable as that term might make Americans, the fact is that ever since 9/11 Americans have been living under dictatorial rule.
What is a dictator? A dictator is a ruler whose powers are omnipotent, that is, unconstrained by external or superior law. A dictator has the power to take whatever actions he wants without concerning himself about whether they are legal. Anything the dictator does is legal because he is the law.
It wasn’t always that way in the United States. When the Constitution was enacted, its goal was not only to call the federal government into existence but also to ensure that it would not be headed by a dictator. To accomplish that, the Framers inserted language expressly limiting the president to a few well-defined powers. If a power wasn’t enumerated, the president could not legally exercise it. The Constitution was the higher law that governed the actions of all federal officials.
What if the president intentionally violated those restrictions? The Constitution provided two remedies. First, the judicial branch could declare the president’s acts to be in violation of the Constitution and order him to comply with its judgment. As the Supreme Court held in the famous case of Marbury v. Madison, the judicial branch’s determination of constitutionality trumped the president’s opinion of constitutionality.
Second, the Constitution gave the legislative branch of government – the Congress – the power to impeach the president and remove him from office.
What many Americans fail to understand is that it is entirely possible to have democracy and dictatorship at the same time. Democracy entails the use of elections to place people into positions of power. Dictatorship entails the extent of the powers that the ruler is able to exercise after he assumes office.
Therefore, it is entirely possible to have a democratically elected dictator – a person who has been duly elected to office who exercises dictatorial powers. This is exactly the case of George W. Bush.
Some Americans become offended whenever critics bring up the name of Adolf Hitler in discussing the dictatorial powers that President Bush is now exercising. They miss the point. When critics bring up Hitler’s name in the context of Bush’s exercise of dictatorial powers, they’re not suggesting that Bush and Hitler are somehow equivalent evils or that Bush has committed the horrors that Hitler committed.
What they’re instead saying is that Hitler sets a good benchmark for what dictatorship involves. Therefore, he provides a good means by which to measure the powers being exercised by another ruler. If George W. Bush or any other American president exercises the same types of omnipotent powers that Hitler exercised, that should serve as a powerful wake-up call for the American people, who have long wondered how the German people could have allowed Hitler to become a dictator (see my article “How Hitler Became a Dictator”).
Therefore, the issue is not whether Bush is a “good” man, as many of his supporters contend. The issue is whether this “good” man has assumed dictatorial powers in the wake of 9/11. The issue also is whether any man, good or evil, should ever be given dictatorial powers.
In fact, Vice President Cheney was making much the same point when he recently said that Venezuela’s democratically elected president, Hugo Chavez, was comparable to Hitler. Cheney wasn’t suggesting that Chavez had instituted concentration camps in which millions were being killed. What he was saying was that Chavez, albeit democratically elected, was “consolidating power.”
The question that the American people must ask is: Has President Bush been doing the same thing – “consolidating power” – ever since 9/11, especially as part of his “war on terrorism” and his invasion of Iraq? Everyone would have to concede that he has.
DICTATORIAL POWERS
Consider the specific powers the president is claiming:
1. The power to order the Pentagon to take any American anywhere in the world, including here in the United States, into custody and punish him, even execute him, without according him the protections of the Bill of Rights. Under this power, all the Pentagon has to do is place a document in front of the president labeling any particular American a “terrorist,” and once the president signs it the Pentagon has the omnipotent power to punish the “terrorist.”
Does the person who is labeled a “terrorist” have the right to appeal such a determination? No. Even if the designated terrorist is a newspaper editor, a prominent celebrity, or a well-known anti-war critic, the president’s determination is final. Keep in mind that, according to the president and the Pentagon, we are at war and neither the courts nor the Congress should be permitted to interfere with the military decisions made by the Pentagon and the commander in chief.
Are there any restraints on the particular type of punishment that the military metes out to a designated terrorist? No. Since the president and the Pentagon consider a terrorist to be an illegal enemy combatant, they refuse to be bound by the Geneva Convention, which provides long-established protections for prisoners of war. No one needs to be reminded of how U.S. military personnel have subjected the “terrorists” held in U.S. facilities at Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, and elsewhere to torture, sex abuse, rape, and murder. While Americans have not been subjected to the same mistreatment, that is simply owing to a discretionary decision by the president and the Pentagon; it could be changed at any time.
2. The power to record telephone conversations of the American people without first securing a search warrant from a magistrate in the judicial branch, as the Bill of Rights requires. In fact, under the president’s rationale, there’s nothing to prevent him from conducting any warrantless searches as long as they are part of the “war on terrorism.”
3. The power to send the entire nation into war against a foreign nation without a declaration of war from Congress, despite the fact that the Constitution expressly delegates that power to Congress, not the president.
No one can deny that those three powers are dictatorial in nature. But it’s important that they be considered in the context of the president’s own justifications for exercising such powers. It is those justifications that have sent America sailing into the uncharted waters of dictatorial rule.
THE CONGRESSIONAL JUSTIFICATION
The president cites two primary justifications for exercising omnipotent power, which he interweaves. First, he says that Congress authorized him to take whatever measures he deemed necessary to seek out and arrest or destroy the terrorists who were responsible for the 9/11 attacks. Second, he says that since we are now at war – the “war on terrorism” – he is able to exercise omnipotent powers as the nation’s military commander in chief.
Bush’s first justification involves the congressional resolution that was enacted in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, which authorized him to use force against those who had conspired to carry out the attacks.
Ironically, Bush’s justification is quite similar to the one that Hitler used to justify his dictatorial powers. After the terrorist attack on the German parliament building, Hitler went to his legislature and argued for a temporary suspension of civil liberties. After heated discussion and debate, including Hitler’s suggestion that such legislation was necessary to protect the freedom of the German people, the necessary number of votes for passage was finally secured. The law granting dictatorial powers to Hitler became known as the “Enabling Act.”
How is this different, in principle, from Bush’s claim that the authorization-of-force resolution that Congress enacted immediately after 9/11 gave him omnipotent powers to deal with the “terrorists”?
There are two major problems with Bush’s reasoning. One is that, unlike Germany’s Enabling Act, which expressly suspended civil liberties, the resolution enacted by Congress did not do any such thing. Yet Bush is effectively interpreting it to mean that Congress granted him what the German Enabling Act granted Hitler – the power to override constitutional protections of civil liberties.
More important, however, is the fact that, under the U.S. Constitution, Congress is not empowered to pass laws that nullify the protections and guarantees in the Constitution. The only way that any provision in the document can be nullified is through constitutional amendment. A statutory attempt to nullify jury trials, search warrant requirements, due process of law, and right to counsel has no legal effect whatsoever.
THE COMMANDER IN CHIEF JUSTIFICATION
Bush’s other justification for the assumption and exercise of omnipotent powers is his role as commander in chief of the armed forces during a time of war. What war? The “war on terrorism,” which, again ironically, was the same type of war that Hitler declared after terrorists struck the Reichstag with a firebomb.
There is one crucial difference between Hitler’s claim of power and Bush’s claim of power, however. The Enabling Act was only a temporary grant of powers. Each time it was set to expire, Hitler would duly return to the Reichstag and secure legislation “temporarily” extending it.
Bush’s rationale for his omnipotent powers, on the other hand, is that, as the nation’s military commander in chief in the “war on terrorism,” his omnipotent powers will last as long as the war continues. Of course, since it is impossible to know with any degree of certainty when the last terrorist is exterminated or neutralized, that means that for all practical purposes the “war on terrorism” is perpetual, which means that Bush’s powers are perpetual as well (and will as well be held by his democratically elected successor in 2009). (If the 2008 Elections are not suspended)
There is no merit whatsoever, however, to Bush’s argument that the Constitution grants omnipotent powers to a president when he puts on the helmet of a military commander in chief. In fact, there is no suggestion whatsoever in the Constitution that war gives rise to the exercise of any powers that nullify any of the other restrictions on power in the Constitution, especially in the Bill of Rights.
What Bush is relying on is the old European notion of imperial dictatorial powers that were claimed by a ruler when he led his military forces into war against another nation.
Think about Napoleon, who became a dictator by centralizing power, especially in his role as commander in chief of French military forces. Or, closer to home, think of the president of Mexico, Santa Anna, whose centralization of power not only made him the “Napoleon of the West” but also precipitated the insurgency in Texas.
This is how Bush views himself as the nation’s commander in chief – as a Napoleon or a Santa Anna, along with the omnipotent powers that those two dictators exercised. It’s the old European notion of inherent imperial powers granted the sovereign, both as emperor and as commander in chief of the nation’s military forces.
There’s just one big problem with Bush’s analysis, however. Our American ancestors fully and completely rejected the notion of inherent imperial powers with the enactment of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. That, in fact, was one major reason for limiting the powers of the president by expressly enumerating them in the Constitution – to negate the old European notion of “inherent” sovereign powers.
DICTATORSHIP OR LIBERTY?
Of course, there are those who say, “The situation is not really that serious. President Bush is a good man. He can be trusted to do the right thing. He won’t abuse these powers. He’s exercised them against only a few Americans.” Do you really believe that?
Do you really trust the habitual liar, war criminal and hypocrite who resides in The White House with the stolen title of President? If so you are a fool and part of the problem.
They’re missing some important points. One is that no matter how good a man President Bush is, dictatorships are the opposite of liberty and, therefore, are morally wrong, no matter how good or benevolent the dictator is. Moreover, once dictatorial powers are relinquished to a “good man,” there is no assurance that he won’t become a bad man or that a bad man will not succeed him. A good test is: Would I want the most despicable character I can think of – say, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, or Mao Zedong – to have any of these powers over me and my country? If your answer is “No,” then your answer should be the same with respect to George W. Bush.
As history has shown, once a ruler is given dictatorial powers, there is no assurance that the powers will not be expanded to larger groups of people and abused much more extensively, especially if there is a huge crisis that strikes fear and panic among the citizenry. After all, keep in mind that, in the absence of the terrorist strike on the Reichstag, Hitler might well not have been able to secure passage of the Enabling Act. Ask yourself: How would the compliant, Republican-controlled Congress respond to a request by President Bush for an expansion of powers if terrorists exploded a massive bomb today in the middle of the U.S. Capitol?
Unfortunately, many Americans, like other people in history, don’t want to face the disquieting truth about the dark and ominous direction in which their nation is currently headed. They simply wish to bury their heads in the sand and not analyze too closely the logical implications of the president’s and the Pentagon’s position. They don’t want to face that we are now traveling in uncharted waters with respect to dictatorship.
Here is the unvarnished truth that Americans are trying to avoid confronting: Both the president and the Pentagon have repeatedly emphasized that the nation is at war. It is a war against the “terrorists.” In this war, the entire world is the battlefield, including both Iraq and the United States.
In this war, the president is the nation’s commander in chief and, as such, wields omnipotent powers to defeat the enemy and win the war. These powers include the power to arrest and punish Americans as illegal “enemy combatants” – denying them jury trials, due process, lawyers, or any federal court interference. They have the power to take people into custody and transport them to foreign regimes for torture. They have the power to record telephone conversations without warrants.
In other words, the president and the Pentagon have the same powers to wage their “war on terrorism” in the United States as they have in Iraq. Yes, you read that right – Iraq. That is the logical consequence of what these people are saying. They have the power to do everything they’re doing in Iraq right here in the United States: the power to break people’s doors down and search their homes and businesses without warrants; the power to arrest and indefinitely detain people; the power to torture and abuse prisoners and detainees; the power to fire missiles into cars or apartment complexes where the “terrorists” are traveling or hiding out; the power to confiscate guns.
Ultimately, the solution to dictatorship lies with the citizenry – a citizenry whose love of liberty trumps everything else, including fear and the desire to be taken care of. Time will tell whether that love of liberty is still a powerful force within the hearts and minds of the American people – sufficiently powerful to overcome the fear and quest for “security” that currently hold people in their grip – sufficiently powerful to restore freedom to our land.
Jacob Hornberger [send him mail] is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
WE WERE WARNED WELL IN ADVANCE, BUT LIKE SO MANY “IT CAN’T HAPPEN HERE” BELIEVERS, WE STUCK OUR OSTRICH HEADS IN THE SAND AND NOW WE HAVE HAD OUR COLLECTIVE ASSES KICKED!
WSWS : News & Analysis : North America
The shadow of dictatorship: Bush established secret government after September 11
By the Editorial Board
The Bush administration has established a “shadow government,” consisting of 75 to 150 officials of the executive branch who have been dispatched to secure, fortified locations to provide “continuity of government,” supposedly as a precaution against a possible nuclear terrorist attack on the US capital, the Washington Post reported Friday. An executive order for temporary evacuation was issued shortly after the September 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, and the arrangement was made permanent a month later.
The administration decided to implement longstanding contingency plans prepared during the Cold War but never before activated. More than 100 officials were evacuated by helicopter within hours of the suicide hijackings which destroyed the World Trade Center and damaged the Pentagon.
They were taken to two locations, believed to be in mountainous terrain in the eastern United States, which became the seat of a temporary regime. In late October the arrangement was made permanent. Since then, officials drawn from top levels of the civil service, just below the appointed cabinet and sub-cabinet level, have been rotated at 90-day intervals. Legal documents have been drafted to give these officials the full powers of the executive branch in the event of a catastrophe.
Administration spokesmen have confirmed the Post report, and Bush himself discussed the subject at a Republican Party campaign appearance in Iowa. “We take the continuity-of-government issue seriously because our nation was under attack,” Bush declared. “Until this country has routed out terrorists wherever they try to hide, we’re not safe.” In other words, the secret government, like the “war on terrorism” itself, is open-ended.
According to a further report in the Post March 3, the Bush administration has deployed the Delta Force within the United States —the same elite commando unit which spearheaded the war in Afghanistan—placing it on standby alert to engage in anti-terrorist actions around Washington in the event of possible nuclear attack.
AN UNCONSTITUTIONAL REGIME
The most sinister characteristic of this secret government is that it consists entirely of executive branch officials, in complete violation of the separation of powers which is the heart of the US constitutional system. No one in the other two branches of government, the legislative and judicial, was included in the plans or even aware of them. In the event such an emergency government were to emerge, it would be an openly dictatorial regime, consisting solely of executive branch officials exercising military and police powers, without any legislative oversight or judicial check on their actions.
Despite the rhetoric about “continuity of government,” the Bush plan is not based on presidential succession as defined in the US Constitution. Vice President Dick Cheney, who would succeed in the event of Bush’s death or incapacity, is in direct charge of the whole operation. But the third and fourth in the order of succession, House Speaker Dennis Hastert and Senate President Pro Tem Robert Byrd, were not involved or even aware of the government they would nominally head.
The Bush administration is apparently in violation of a 1988 executive order on emergency preparedness issued by President Reagan, which instructed the National Security Council to “arrange for Executive branch liaison with, and assistance to, the Congress and the federal judiciary on national security-emergency preparedness matters.”
In television interviews on Sunday, the leading congressional Democrat, Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, confirmed that neither he nor any other congressional leader had been consulted about the plan. Asked whether this constituted a secret government, not just potentially in the future, but in actuality today, he replied, “I don’t know. I don’t know what their role is, what their current authority is, because we haven’t been informed. You’d think one person in Congress would know, and whether a congressional and judicial component is included.”
This is an extraordinary state of affairs: the leader of the US Senate, the most powerful legislator in Washington, admits that he does not know whether the US government still observes the conventions of democratic rule, or whether it is being run behind the scenes by unelected officials who are not responsible for their actions either to elected representatives or to the public as a whole.
From a political standpoint, the establishment of a secret government is the culmination of a protracted, behind-the-scenes struggle for power in official Washington which has consumed nearly an entire decade. This initially took the form of a legal/media/congressional campaign to destabilize the Clinton administration, including the shutdown of the federal government in 1995-96, and a series of independent counsel investigations which culminated in impeachment.
This was followed by the antidemocratic intervention of the Supreme Court into the 2000 presidential election, suppressing the vote-counting in Florida and awarding the presidency to Bush. Now an unelected president has established a secret, military-backed government of unelected officials, behind the backs of the elected members of the Congress, Democratic and Republican alike. The Bush administration has seized on the “war on terrorism” to implement a sweeping change in American foreign policy and political life: the implementation of a radical right-wing program of militarism abroad and attacks on democratic rights at home.
The greatest threat to the American people comes, not from foreign terrorists or Islamic fundamentalists, but from the behind-the-scenes machinations of the American government itself. The terrorist attacks—in which the role of US intelligence agencies and the US military still remains to be investigated—have become the pretext for the setting up of a parallel government, concealed from the legislature. The “war on terrorism” has become the foundation on which the Bush administration has begun to erect a military-police dictatorship, run by a secret cabal of unnamed officials, working out of the White House and various “undisclosed secure locations.”
See Also: (Reminders that this has been coming for some time.)
What is a dictator? A dictator is a ruler whose powers are omnipotent, that is, unconstrained by external or superior law. A dictator has the power to take whatever actions he wants without concerning himself about whether they are legal. Anything the dictator does is legal because he is the law.
It wasn’t always that way in the United States. When the Constitution was enacted, its goal was not only to call the federal government into existence but also to ensure that it would not be headed by a dictator. To accomplish that, the Framers inserted language expressly limiting the president to a few well-defined powers. If a power wasn’t enumerated, the president could not legally exercise it. The Constitution was the higher law that governed the actions of all federal officials.
What if the president intentionally violated those restrictions? The Constitution provided two remedies. First, the judicial branch could declare the president’s acts to be in violation of the Constitution and order him to comply with its judgment. As the Supreme Court held in the famous case of Marbury v. Madison, the judicial branch’s determination of constitutionality trumped the president’s opinion of constitutionality.
Second, the Constitution gave the legislative branch of government – the Congress – the power to impeach the president and remove him from office.
What many Americans fail to understand is that it is entirely possible to have democracy and dictatorship at the same time. Democracy entails the use of elections to place people into positions of power. Dictatorship entails the extent of the powers that the ruler is able to exercise after he assumes office.
Therefore, it is entirely possible to have a democratically elected dictator – a person who has been duly elected to office who exercises dictatorial powers. This is exactly the case of George W. Bush.
Some Americans become offended whenever critics bring up the name of Adolf Hitler in discussing the dictatorial powers that President Bush is now exercising. They miss the point. When critics bring up Hitler’s name in the context of Bush’s exercise of dictatorial powers, they’re not suggesting that Bush and Hitler are somehow equivalent evils or that Bush has committed the horrors that Hitler committed.
What they’re instead saying is that Hitler sets a good benchmark for what dictatorship involves. Therefore, he provides a good means by which to measure the powers being exercised by another ruler. If George W. Bush or any other American president exercises the same types of omnipotent powers that Hitler exercised, that should serve as a powerful wake-up call for the American people, who have long wondered how the German people could have allowed Hitler to become a dictator (see my article “How Hitler Became a Dictator”).
Therefore, the issue is not whether Bush is a “good” man, as many of his supporters contend. The issue is whether this “good” man has assumed dictatorial powers in the wake of 9/11. The issue also is whether any man, good or evil, should ever be given dictatorial powers.
In fact, Vice President Cheney was making much the same point when he recently said that Venezuela’s democratically elected president, Hugo Chavez, was comparable to Hitler. Cheney wasn’t suggesting that Chavez had instituted concentration camps in which millions were being killed. What he was saying was that Chavez, albeit democratically elected, was “consolidating power.”
The question that the American people must ask is: Has President Bush been doing the same thing – “consolidating power” – ever since 9/11, especially as part of his “war on terrorism” and his invasion of Iraq? Everyone would have to concede that he has.
DICTATORIAL POWERS
Consider the specific powers the president is claiming:
1. The power to order the Pentagon to take any American anywhere in the world, including here in the United States, into custody and punish him, even execute him, without according him the protections of the Bill of Rights. Under this power, all the Pentagon has to do is place a document in front of the president labeling any particular American a “terrorist,” and once the president signs it the Pentagon has the omnipotent power to punish the “terrorist.”
Does the person who is labeled a “terrorist” have the right to appeal such a determination? No. Even if the designated terrorist is a newspaper editor, a prominent celebrity, or a well-known anti-war critic, the president’s determination is final. Keep in mind that, according to the president and the Pentagon, we are at war and neither the courts nor the Congress should be permitted to interfere with the military decisions made by the Pentagon and the commander in chief.
Are there any restraints on the particular type of punishment that the military metes out to a designated terrorist? No. Since the president and the Pentagon consider a terrorist to be an illegal enemy combatant, they refuse to be bound by the Geneva Convention, which provides long-established protections for prisoners of war. No one needs to be reminded of how U.S. military personnel have subjected the “terrorists” held in U.S. facilities at Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, and elsewhere to torture, sex abuse, rape, and murder. While Americans have not been subjected to the same mistreatment, that is simply owing to a discretionary decision by the president and the Pentagon; it could be changed at any time.
2. The power to record telephone conversations of the American people without first securing a search warrant from a magistrate in the judicial branch, as the Bill of Rights requires. In fact, under the president’s rationale, there’s nothing to prevent him from conducting any warrantless searches as long as they are part of the “war on terrorism.”
3. The power to send the entire nation into war against a foreign nation without a declaration of war from Congress, despite the fact that the Constitution expressly delegates that power to Congress, not the president.
No one can deny that those three powers are dictatorial in nature. But it’s important that they be considered in the context of the president’s own justifications for exercising such powers. It is those justifications that have sent America sailing into the uncharted waters of dictatorial rule.
THE CONGRESSIONAL JUSTIFICATION
The president cites two primary justifications for exercising omnipotent power, which he interweaves. First, he says that Congress authorized him to take whatever measures he deemed necessary to seek out and arrest or destroy the terrorists who were responsible for the 9/11 attacks. Second, he says that since we are now at war – the “war on terrorism” – he is able to exercise omnipotent powers as the nation’s military commander in chief.
Bush’s first justification involves the congressional resolution that was enacted in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, which authorized him to use force against those who had conspired to carry out the attacks.
Ironically, Bush’s justification is quite similar to the one that Hitler used to justify his dictatorial powers. After the terrorist attack on the German parliament building, Hitler went to his legislature and argued for a temporary suspension of civil liberties. After heated discussion and debate, including Hitler’s suggestion that such legislation was necessary to protect the freedom of the German people, the necessary number of votes for passage was finally secured. The law granting dictatorial powers to Hitler became known as the “Enabling Act.”
How is this different, in principle, from Bush’s claim that the authorization-of-force resolution that Congress enacted immediately after 9/11 gave him omnipotent powers to deal with the “terrorists”?
There are two major problems with Bush’s reasoning. One is that, unlike Germany’s Enabling Act, which expressly suspended civil liberties, the resolution enacted by Congress did not do any such thing. Yet Bush is effectively interpreting it to mean that Congress granted him what the German Enabling Act granted Hitler – the power to override constitutional protections of civil liberties.
More important, however, is the fact that, under the U.S. Constitution, Congress is not empowered to pass laws that nullify the protections and guarantees in the Constitution. The only way that any provision in the document can be nullified is through constitutional amendment. A statutory attempt to nullify jury trials, search warrant requirements, due process of law, and right to counsel has no legal effect whatsoever.
THE COMMANDER IN CHIEF JUSTIFICATION
Bush’s other justification for the assumption and exercise of omnipotent powers is his role as commander in chief of the armed forces during a time of war. What war? The “war on terrorism,” which, again ironically, was the same type of war that Hitler declared after terrorists struck the Reichstag with a firebomb.
There is one crucial difference between Hitler’s claim of power and Bush’s claim of power, however. The Enabling Act was only a temporary grant of powers. Each time it was set to expire, Hitler would duly return to the Reichstag and secure legislation “temporarily” extending it.
Bush’s rationale for his omnipotent powers, on the other hand, is that, as the nation’s military commander in chief in the “war on terrorism,” his omnipotent powers will last as long as the war continues. Of course, since it is impossible to know with any degree of certainty when the last terrorist is exterminated or neutralized, that means that for all practical purposes the “war on terrorism” is perpetual, which means that Bush’s powers are perpetual as well (and will as well be held by his democratically elected successor in 2009). (If the 2008 Elections are not suspended)
There is no merit whatsoever, however, to Bush’s argument that the Constitution grants omnipotent powers to a president when he puts on the helmet of a military commander in chief. In fact, there is no suggestion whatsoever in the Constitution that war gives rise to the exercise of any powers that nullify any of the other restrictions on power in the Constitution, especially in the Bill of Rights.
What Bush is relying on is the old European notion of imperial dictatorial powers that were claimed by a ruler when he led his military forces into war against another nation.
Think about Napoleon, who became a dictator by centralizing power, especially in his role as commander in chief of French military forces. Or, closer to home, think of the president of Mexico, Santa Anna, whose centralization of power not only made him the “Napoleon of the West” but also precipitated the insurgency in Texas.
This is how Bush views himself as the nation’s commander in chief – as a Napoleon or a Santa Anna, along with the omnipotent powers that those two dictators exercised. It’s the old European notion of inherent imperial powers granted the sovereign, both as emperor and as commander in chief of the nation’s military forces.
There’s just one big problem with Bush’s analysis, however. Our American ancestors fully and completely rejected the notion of inherent imperial powers with the enactment of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. That, in fact, was one major reason for limiting the powers of the president by expressly enumerating them in the Constitution – to negate the old European notion of “inherent” sovereign powers.
DICTATORSHIP OR LIBERTY?
Of course, there are those who say, “The situation is not really that serious. President Bush is a good man. He can be trusted to do the right thing. He won’t abuse these powers. He’s exercised them against only a few Americans.” Do you really believe that?
Do you really trust the habitual liar, war criminal and hypocrite who resides in The White House with the stolen title of President? If so you are a fool and part of the problem.
They’re missing some important points. One is that no matter how good a man President Bush is, dictatorships are the opposite of liberty and, therefore, are morally wrong, no matter how good or benevolent the dictator is. Moreover, once dictatorial powers are relinquished to a “good man,” there is no assurance that he won’t become a bad man or that a bad man will not succeed him. A good test is: Would I want the most despicable character I can think of – say, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, or Mao Zedong – to have any of these powers over me and my country? If your answer is “No,” then your answer should be the same with respect to George W. Bush.
As history has shown, once a ruler is given dictatorial powers, there is no assurance that the powers will not be expanded to larger groups of people and abused much more extensively, especially if there is a huge crisis that strikes fear and panic among the citizenry. After all, keep in mind that, in the absence of the terrorist strike on the Reichstag, Hitler might well not have been able to secure passage of the Enabling Act. Ask yourself: How would the compliant, Republican-controlled Congress respond to a request by President Bush for an expansion of powers if terrorists exploded a massive bomb today in the middle of the U.S. Capitol?
Unfortunately, many Americans, like other people in history, don’t want to face the disquieting truth about the dark and ominous direction in which their nation is currently headed. They simply wish to bury their heads in the sand and not analyze too closely the logical implications of the president’s and the Pentagon’s position. They don’t want to face that we are now traveling in uncharted waters with respect to dictatorship.
Here is the unvarnished truth that Americans are trying to avoid confronting: Both the president and the Pentagon have repeatedly emphasized that the nation is at war. It is a war against the “terrorists.” In this war, the entire world is the battlefield, including both Iraq and the United States.
In this war, the president is the nation’s commander in chief and, as such, wields omnipotent powers to defeat the enemy and win the war. These powers include the power to arrest and punish Americans as illegal “enemy combatants” – denying them jury trials, due process, lawyers, or any federal court interference. They have the power to take people into custody and transport them to foreign regimes for torture. They have the power to record telephone conversations without warrants.
In other words, the president and the Pentagon have the same powers to wage their “war on terrorism” in the United States as they have in Iraq. Yes, you read that right – Iraq. That is the logical consequence of what these people are saying. They have the power to do everything they’re doing in Iraq right here in the United States: the power to break people’s doors down and search their homes and businesses without warrants; the power to arrest and indefinitely detain people; the power to torture and abuse prisoners and detainees; the power to fire missiles into cars or apartment complexes where the “terrorists” are traveling or hiding out; the power to confiscate guns.
Ultimately, the solution to dictatorship lies with the citizenry – a citizenry whose love of liberty trumps everything else, including fear and the desire to be taken care of. Time will tell whether that love of liberty is still a powerful force within the hearts and minds of the American people – sufficiently powerful to overcome the fear and quest for “security” that currently hold people in their grip – sufficiently powerful to restore freedom to our land.
Jacob Hornberger [send him mail] is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
WE WERE WARNED WELL IN ADVANCE, BUT LIKE SO MANY “IT CAN’T HAPPEN HERE” BELIEVERS, WE STUCK OUR OSTRICH HEADS IN THE SAND AND NOW WE HAVE HAD OUR COLLECTIVE ASSES KICKED!
WSWS : News & Analysis : North America
The shadow of dictatorship: Bush established secret government after September 11
By the Editorial Board
The Bush administration has established a “shadow government,” consisting of 75 to 150 officials of the executive branch who have been dispatched to secure, fortified locations to provide “continuity of government,” supposedly as a precaution against a possible nuclear terrorist attack on the US capital, the Washington Post reported Friday. An executive order for temporary evacuation was issued shortly after the September 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, and the arrangement was made permanent a month later.
The administration decided to implement longstanding contingency plans prepared during the Cold War but never before activated. More than 100 officials were evacuated by helicopter within hours of the suicide hijackings which destroyed the World Trade Center and damaged the Pentagon.
They were taken to two locations, believed to be in mountainous terrain in the eastern United States, which became the seat of a temporary regime. In late October the arrangement was made permanent. Since then, officials drawn from top levels of the civil service, just below the appointed cabinet and sub-cabinet level, have been rotated at 90-day intervals. Legal documents have been drafted to give these officials the full powers of the executive branch in the event of a catastrophe.
Administration spokesmen have confirmed the Post report, and Bush himself discussed the subject at a Republican Party campaign appearance in Iowa. “We take the continuity-of-government issue seriously because our nation was under attack,” Bush declared. “Until this country has routed out terrorists wherever they try to hide, we’re not safe.” In other words, the secret government, like the “war on terrorism” itself, is open-ended.
According to a further report in the Post March 3, the Bush administration has deployed the Delta Force within the United States —the same elite commando unit which spearheaded the war in Afghanistan—placing it on standby alert to engage in anti-terrorist actions around Washington in the event of possible nuclear attack.
AN UNCONSTITUTIONAL REGIME
The most sinister characteristic of this secret government is that it consists entirely of executive branch officials, in complete violation of the separation of powers which is the heart of the US constitutional system. No one in the other two branches of government, the legislative and judicial, was included in the plans or even aware of them. In the event such an emergency government were to emerge, it would be an openly dictatorial regime, consisting solely of executive branch officials exercising military and police powers, without any legislative oversight or judicial check on their actions.
Despite the rhetoric about “continuity of government,” the Bush plan is not based on presidential succession as defined in the US Constitution. Vice President Dick Cheney, who would succeed in the event of Bush’s death or incapacity, is in direct charge of the whole operation. But the third and fourth in the order of succession, House Speaker Dennis Hastert and Senate President Pro Tem Robert Byrd, were not involved or even aware of the government they would nominally head.
The Bush administration is apparently in violation of a 1988 executive order on emergency preparedness issued by President Reagan, which instructed the National Security Council to “arrange for Executive branch liaison with, and assistance to, the Congress and the federal judiciary on national security-emergency preparedness matters.”
In television interviews on Sunday, the leading congressional Democrat, Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, confirmed that neither he nor any other congressional leader had been consulted about the plan. Asked whether this constituted a secret government, not just potentially in the future, but in actuality today, he replied, “I don’t know. I don’t know what their role is, what their current authority is, because we haven’t been informed. You’d think one person in Congress would know, and whether a congressional and judicial component is included.”
This is an extraordinary state of affairs: the leader of the US Senate, the most powerful legislator in Washington, admits that he does not know whether the US government still observes the conventions of democratic rule, or whether it is being run behind the scenes by unelected officials who are not responsible for their actions either to elected representatives or to the public as a whole.
From a political standpoint, the establishment of a secret government is the culmination of a protracted, behind-the-scenes struggle for power in official Washington which has consumed nearly an entire decade. This initially took the form of a legal/media/congressional campaign to destabilize the Clinton administration, including the shutdown of the federal government in 1995-96, and a series of independent counsel investigations which culminated in impeachment.
This was followed by the antidemocratic intervention of the Supreme Court into the 2000 presidential election, suppressing the vote-counting in Florida and awarding the presidency to Bush. Now an unelected president has established a secret, military-backed government of unelected officials, behind the backs of the elected members of the Congress, Democratic and Republican alike. The Bush administration has seized on the “war on terrorism” to implement a sweeping change in American foreign policy and political life: the implementation of a radical right-wing program of militarism abroad and attacks on democratic rights at home.
The greatest threat to the American people comes, not from foreign terrorists or Islamic fundamentalists, but from the behind-the-scenes machinations of the American government itself. The terrorist attacks—in which the role of US intelligence agencies and the US military still remains to be investigated—have become the pretext for the setting up of a parallel government, concealed from the legislature. The “war on terrorism” has become the foundation on which the Bush administration has begun to erect a military-police dictatorship, run by a secret cabal of unnamed officials, working out of the White House and various “undisclosed secure locations.”
See Also: (Reminders that this has been coming for some time.)
Billions for war and repression: Bush budget for a garrison state[6 February 2002]
The 2000 election and Bush's attack on democratic rights[14 November 2001]
Bush’s war at home: a creeping coup d’état[7 November 2001]
BUSH'S WARTIME DICTATORSHIP THE THREAT OF PRESIDENTIAL SUPREMACISM BY JUSTIN RAIMONDO
In defending his edict authorizing surveillance of phone calls and e-mails originating in the United States, President Bush reiterated legal arguments, long made by his intellectual Praetorians, that imbue the White House with wartime powers no different from those exercised by a Roman emperor. As Barton Gellman and Dafna Linzer pointed out in the Washington Post the other day:
"Bush's constitutional argument, in the eyes of some legal scholars and previous White House advisers, relies on extraordinary claims of presidential war-making power. Bush said yesterday that the lawfulness of his directives was affirmed by the attorney general and White House counsel, a list that omitted the legislative and judicial branches of government. On occasion the Bush administration has explicitly rejected the authority of courts and Congress to impose boundaries on the power of the commander in chief, describing the president's war-making powers in legal briefs as 'plenary' – a term defined as 'full,' 'complete,' and 'absolute.'"
The new presidential absolutism infuses not only Bush's foreign policy, which asserts the "right" of the White House to make war on anyone, anywhere, anytime, and for any reason, but also, increasingly, his domestic policies. The doctrine of wartime presidential supremacy has been dramatized, in recent days, in a series of disturbing developments on the home front: the utilization of "national security letters" by the FBI to snoop on thousands of U.S. citizens, the creation of a permanent database that amounts to an electronic "enemies list," and just this past week the revelation that the National Security Agency is eavesdropping on phone calls and e-mails originating in the U.S. – without going to the FISA court that normally oversees such activities.
This doctrine of presidential supremacy is derived, in substance and style, from the unrestrained militarism of the regime. That we are now in a state of permanent war requires that our government undertake a perpetual war on what is left of our civil liberties. Given the nature of this conflict with a formless, stateless enemy, more a concept than a combatant, there is no longer any division between the "home front" and the struggle against the worldwide Islamist insurgency, between domestic and foreign policy. We spy on Americans because we fight in Iraq, and, as time goes on, the converse will be true: we will continue the overseas battle in order for the regime to win the fight against its political opponents in the U.S. That the antiwar opposition, already demonized by neoconservative ideologues as "appeasers" and worse, will wind up being treated as "the enemy" should surprise no one.
Of course, the regime isn't locking up its domestic opponents and "renditioning" them off to some godforsaken gulag quite yet. However, it is more and more treating opposition to its policies – or even discussion of its methods – as the equivalent of treason, and this story about how, in response to the NSA revelations, the president summoned the executive editor and the publisher of the New York Times to the Oval Office merely underscores how far we have gone in that direction. The president went out of his way to denounce the Times piece as "a shameful act," and this overbearing style is part and parcel of the developing tyranny. Lew Rockwell has posited the rise of what he calls "red-state fascism," as have I, and we can see, from recent events, that this phenomenon is quickly congealing from a fluid potentiality into a hard reality. All the elements of a new American fascism are in place: a regime that recognizes no restraints on its power, either moral or constitutional; the rise of a leader cult surrounding the president; and a foreign policy of relentless aggression. And make no mistake: it is this latter that makes all the rest of it possible.
Without the pretext of a wartime emergency, the neoconservative ideologues who seek to reconcile constitutional "originalism" with a legal and political doctrine of presidential hegemony that would have horrified the Founders would be relegated to the margins and considered harmless crackpots. Today, however, the crackpots are not only in power, they are going on the offensive – with much success.
Just how much success is evidenced by the complete inability and unwillingness of the Democrats to stand up against this systematic assault on our liberties at the most crucial point: that is, at the time it was initiated. This is underscored by the fact that Sen. Jay Rockefeller is coming out in public against the NSA eavesdropping only now that it is politically popular to do so. When it really counted, however, those few congressional Democrats who were let in on the secret unauthorized wiretaps, such as Rockefeller and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, said nothing. In the summer of 2003, Rockefeller wrote to Vice President Dick Cheney that, while expressing "concerns" about bypassing the FISA court, he refused to pass judgment: "As you know," he wrote, "I am neither a technician or an attorney," and he therefore felt "unable to fully evaluate, much less endorse" the NSA intercepts.
Could a wimpier "opposition" even be imagined? Rockefeller held this secret close to his chest for years, as did Pelosi. These Weimar Democrats are gutless wonders, fully complicit in the regime's assault on our liberties and the constitutional order. To anyone looking to the Democratic Party as the locus of an effective opposition to red-state fascism, I would strongly suggest that they are setting themselves up for a severe disappointment – and that they'd best look elsewhere.
Bush: dictator with a stroke of a pen
Published by Pam Spaulding May 24th, 2007 in Boggles the Mind, Bad Ideas, Impeach The Fucker
The fact that Dear Leader is a megalomaniac has been apparent for quite some time now, but on May 9, when he placed his John Hancock on the “National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive,” his fulfillment of the fantasy of becoming King George has alarmed even the true believers.
President Bush has signed a directive granting extraordinary powers to the office of the president in the event of a declared national emergency, apparently without congressional approval or oversight.
…The directive establishes under the office of the president a new national continuity coordinator whose job is to make plans for “National Essential Functions” of all federal, state, local, territorial and tribal governments, as well as private sector organizations to continue functioning under the president’s directives in the event of a national emergency.
“Catastrophic emergency” is loosely defined as “any incident, regardless of location, that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the U.S. population, infrastructure, environment, economy, or government functions.”
The directive revokes the 1998 Presidential Decision Directive 67 that was signed by Bill Clinton. The summary of PDD 67 is that it required federal agencies to develop continuity plans in the case of an emergency or national disaster (the full text of the document hasn’t been released to the public). That 1998 directive obviously didn’t satisfy Bush’s requirements for executive branch power.
The power grab, which hasn’t received enough press fanfare (I wonder why?), even has the likes of Swift Boater Jerome Corsi unloading on this news at WND. See after the flip.
BUSH'S WARTIME DICTATORSHIP THE THREAT OF PRESIDENTIAL SUPREMACISM BY JUSTIN RAIMONDO
In defending his edict authorizing surveillance of phone calls and e-mails originating in the United States, President Bush reiterated legal arguments, long made by his intellectual Praetorians, that imbue the White House with wartime powers no different from those exercised by a Roman emperor. As Barton Gellman and Dafna Linzer pointed out in the Washington Post the other day:
"Bush's constitutional argument, in the eyes of some legal scholars and previous White House advisers, relies on extraordinary claims of presidential war-making power. Bush said yesterday that the lawfulness of his directives was affirmed by the attorney general and White House counsel, a list that omitted the legislative and judicial branches of government. On occasion the Bush administration has explicitly rejected the authority of courts and Congress to impose boundaries on the power of the commander in chief, describing the president's war-making powers in legal briefs as 'plenary' – a term defined as 'full,' 'complete,' and 'absolute.'"
The new presidential absolutism infuses not only Bush's foreign policy, which asserts the "right" of the White House to make war on anyone, anywhere, anytime, and for any reason, but also, increasingly, his domestic policies. The doctrine of wartime presidential supremacy has been dramatized, in recent days, in a series of disturbing developments on the home front: the utilization of "national security letters" by the FBI to snoop on thousands of U.S. citizens, the creation of a permanent database that amounts to an electronic "enemies list," and just this past week the revelation that the National Security Agency is eavesdropping on phone calls and e-mails originating in the U.S. – without going to the FISA court that normally oversees such activities.
This doctrine of presidential supremacy is derived, in substance and style, from the unrestrained militarism of the regime. That we are now in a state of permanent war requires that our government undertake a perpetual war on what is left of our civil liberties. Given the nature of this conflict with a formless, stateless enemy, more a concept than a combatant, there is no longer any division between the "home front" and the struggle against the worldwide Islamist insurgency, between domestic and foreign policy. We spy on Americans because we fight in Iraq, and, as time goes on, the converse will be true: we will continue the overseas battle in order for the regime to win the fight against its political opponents in the U.S. That the antiwar opposition, already demonized by neoconservative ideologues as "appeasers" and worse, will wind up being treated as "the enemy" should surprise no one.
Of course, the regime isn't locking up its domestic opponents and "renditioning" them off to some godforsaken gulag quite yet. However, it is more and more treating opposition to its policies – or even discussion of its methods – as the equivalent of treason, and this story about how, in response to the NSA revelations, the president summoned the executive editor and the publisher of the New York Times to the Oval Office merely underscores how far we have gone in that direction. The president went out of his way to denounce the Times piece as "a shameful act," and this overbearing style is part and parcel of the developing tyranny. Lew Rockwell has posited the rise of what he calls "red-state fascism," as have I, and we can see, from recent events, that this phenomenon is quickly congealing from a fluid potentiality into a hard reality. All the elements of a new American fascism are in place: a regime that recognizes no restraints on its power, either moral or constitutional; the rise of a leader cult surrounding the president; and a foreign policy of relentless aggression. And make no mistake: it is this latter that makes all the rest of it possible.
Without the pretext of a wartime emergency, the neoconservative ideologues who seek to reconcile constitutional "originalism" with a legal and political doctrine of presidential hegemony that would have horrified the Founders would be relegated to the margins and considered harmless crackpots. Today, however, the crackpots are not only in power, they are going on the offensive – with much success.
Just how much success is evidenced by the complete inability and unwillingness of the Democrats to stand up against this systematic assault on our liberties at the most crucial point: that is, at the time it was initiated. This is underscored by the fact that Sen. Jay Rockefeller is coming out in public against the NSA eavesdropping only now that it is politically popular to do so. When it really counted, however, those few congressional Democrats who were let in on the secret unauthorized wiretaps, such as Rockefeller and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, said nothing. In the summer of 2003, Rockefeller wrote to Vice President Dick Cheney that, while expressing "concerns" about bypassing the FISA court, he refused to pass judgment: "As you know," he wrote, "I am neither a technician or an attorney," and he therefore felt "unable to fully evaluate, much less endorse" the NSA intercepts.
Could a wimpier "opposition" even be imagined? Rockefeller held this secret close to his chest for years, as did Pelosi. These Weimar Democrats are gutless wonders, fully complicit in the regime's assault on our liberties and the constitutional order. To anyone looking to the Democratic Party as the locus of an effective opposition to red-state fascism, I would strongly suggest that they are setting themselves up for a severe disappointment – and that they'd best look elsewhere.
Bush: dictator with a stroke of a pen
Published by Pam Spaulding May 24th, 2007 in Boggles the Mind, Bad Ideas, Impeach The Fucker
The fact that Dear Leader is a megalomaniac has been apparent for quite some time now, but on May 9, when he placed his John Hancock on the “National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive,” his fulfillment of the fantasy of becoming King George has alarmed even the true believers.
President Bush has signed a directive granting extraordinary powers to the office of the president in the event of a declared national emergency, apparently without congressional approval or oversight.
…The directive establishes under the office of the president a new national continuity coordinator whose job is to make plans for “National Essential Functions” of all federal, state, local, territorial and tribal governments, as well as private sector organizations to continue functioning under the president’s directives in the event of a national emergency.
“Catastrophic emergency” is loosely defined as “any incident, regardless of location, that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the U.S. population, infrastructure, environment, economy, or government functions.”
The directive revokes the 1998 Presidential Decision Directive 67 that was signed by Bill Clinton. The summary of PDD 67 is that it required federal agencies to develop continuity plans in the case of an emergency or national disaster (the full text of the document hasn’t been released to the public). That 1998 directive obviously didn’t satisfy Bush’s requirements for executive branch power.
The power grab, which hasn’t received enough press fanfare (I wonder why?), even has the likes of Swift Boater Jerome Corsi unloading on this news at WND. See after the flip.
When the president determines a catastrophic emergency has occurred, the president can take over all government functions and direct all private sector activities to ensure we will emerge from the emergency with an “enduring constitutional government.”
Translated into layman’s terms, when the president determines a national emergency has occurred, the president can declare to the office of the presidency powers usually assumed by dictators to direct any and all government and business activities until the emergency is declared over.
Ironically, the directive sees no contradiction in the assumption of dictatorial powers by the president with the goal of maintaining constitutional continuity through an emergency.
Of course, when would an emergency officially be “over?” I guess the President should make the call on that one, right?
Where is Congress on this? What about presidential accountability? MIA. Why aren’t there calls from all along the spectrum to examine this action by Bush? His Global War On Terror is not grounds to anoint himself dictator.
The Base is not happy (after all, this applies to any president, not just their demi-god), but way too many have a screw loose over this and don’t see a problem.
One of the most serious problems with this entire scenario being with the very definition of a “Catastrophic Emergency. “Catastrophic emergency” is loosely defined as “any incident, regardless of location, that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the U.S. population, infrastructure, environment, economy, or government functions.”
How incredibly broad! Derr Bushfuhrer is only in office for another 1.5 years (barring further power grabs at the last minute under some ‘emergency’) so unless overturned, future presidents can use this. No matter what noble intentions a person might have, power is hard to resist. The old saw of ‘absolute power corrupts absolutely ‘ has a lot of truth to it. Even the wacky WND crowd can see that.
From the General Public Several Comments:
And as a Native, I find it interesting that tribal govt’s are specified, and that a ‘catastrohpic emergency’ includes infrastructure and economy. Hmmmm. Wonder if that could include land and power grabs over uranium, coal, water resources, etc, on Indian lands.
This completely went unreported by MSM. Most Americans don’t know about this, or what this implies. Catastrophe can be defined easily, whether it’s another hurricane, an alleged report of a bird flu outbreak, an alleged computer virus that attacks government computer systems. Look how subjective “enemy combatant” is defined. I think everyone should spread the world, and ask their congress people how and why this happened.
Well, following his example of 9/11 and Katrina/New Orleans, I think we can be pretty sure that when an emergency occurs, he won’t do a damn thing, he’ll be completely MIA. Not that I would trust him to walk my dog…
“It makes me wonder if something big is about to happen. I know that sounds paranoid but I don’t trust this administration for a second. ” It’s certainly healthy. No one should trust this regime or underestimate what they are capable of doing. The aftermath of Katrina, when private security firms were brought in, such as Blackwater, showed us that the administration is not adverse to paying these firms big money to oppress and harass populations of citizens.
http://sandiego.indymedia.org/en/2007/05/126213.shtml
Blackwater, for example, has created a new domestic division, as well as expanding their training facilities to other locations, including out west. And they’re making even more money, by hiring foreign mercs, at cheap prices.
so would a war with Iran - which disrupts oil supplies from the gulf tossing the US economy into chaos count as a Catastrophic Emergency? Just thinking out loud.
I heard this from Jim Ward topday on Stephanie Miller … goes to what I have been saying for years; there won’t be a 2008 election* because we will have a terrorist attack and -President- Dictator for Life GW Bush will take power.
(alternative is that we do have the 2008 elections and a Democrat wins, then we will have a Novemeber - January surprise and Bush takes over for life)
President Bush has signed a directive granting extraordinary powers to the office of the president in the event of a declared national emergency…
Like a Dem victory in 08?
And now for another little problem.
“(21) This directive:
(a) Shall be implemented consistent with applicable law and the authorities of agencies, or heads of agencies, vested by law, and subject to the availability of appropriations;
(b) Shall not be construed to impair or otherwise affect (i) the functions of the Director of the Office of Management and Budget relating to budget, administrative, and legislative proposals, or (ii) the authority of the Secretary of Defense over the Department of Defense, including the chain of command for military forces from the President, to the Secretary of Defense, to the commander of military forces, or military command and control procedures;
How can this be “consistant with applicable law”?
Who is the Director of the Office of Management and Budget? Why is this person exempt? Who is this person, and how to we reach him or her when this takes place?
Congress still has the power of the purse. If he tries to pull this off, they could, theoretically, immediately de-fund the military, or refuse to pass the next year’s budget. One hopes. No, I take that back given their performance…they will be totally out flanked and will do nothing, in fact they will probably be in either hiding or a state of mental paralysis incapable of doing anything but sputtering their dismay to the last uncensored broadcasts before the lights go out on a media blackout.
Bush has been quoted as saying it three times in public, before his handlers shut him up. Saying it more than once sort of takes out the jokey-humor intent. When Bush does his verbal flubs, he tends to say things that he really feels are true, but that are contrary to his false image of what he represents.
http://www.slate.com/id/76886/
Translated into layman’s terms, when the president determines a national emergency has occurred, the president can declare to the office of the presidency powers usually assumed by dictators to direct any and all government and business activities until the emergency is declared over.
Ironically, the directive sees no contradiction in the assumption of dictatorial powers by the president with the goal of maintaining constitutional continuity through an emergency.
Of course, when would an emergency officially be “over?” I guess the President should make the call on that one, right?
Where is Congress on this? What about presidential accountability? MIA. Why aren’t there calls from all along the spectrum to examine this action by Bush? His Global War On Terror is not grounds to anoint himself dictator.
The Base is not happy (after all, this applies to any president, not just their demi-god), but way too many have a screw loose over this and don’t see a problem.
One of the most serious problems with this entire scenario being with the very definition of a “Catastrophic Emergency. “Catastrophic emergency” is loosely defined as “any incident, regardless of location, that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the U.S. population, infrastructure, environment, economy, or government functions.”
How incredibly broad! Derr Bushfuhrer is only in office for another 1.5 years (barring further power grabs at the last minute under some ‘emergency’) so unless overturned, future presidents can use this. No matter what noble intentions a person might have, power is hard to resist. The old saw of ‘absolute power corrupts absolutely ‘ has a lot of truth to it. Even the wacky WND crowd can see that.
From the General Public Several Comments:
And as a Native, I find it interesting that tribal govt’s are specified, and that a ‘catastrohpic emergency’ includes infrastructure and economy. Hmmmm. Wonder if that could include land and power grabs over uranium, coal, water resources, etc, on Indian lands.
This completely went unreported by MSM. Most Americans don’t know about this, or what this implies. Catastrophe can be defined easily, whether it’s another hurricane, an alleged report of a bird flu outbreak, an alleged computer virus that attacks government computer systems. Look how subjective “enemy combatant” is defined. I think everyone should spread the world, and ask their congress people how and why this happened.
Well, following his example of 9/11 and Katrina/New Orleans, I think we can be pretty sure that when an emergency occurs, he won’t do a damn thing, he’ll be completely MIA. Not that I would trust him to walk my dog…
“It makes me wonder if something big is about to happen. I know that sounds paranoid but I don’t trust this administration for a second. ” It’s certainly healthy. No one should trust this regime or underestimate what they are capable of doing. The aftermath of Katrina, when private security firms were brought in, such as Blackwater, showed us that the administration is not adverse to paying these firms big money to oppress and harass populations of citizens.
http://sandiego.indymedia.org/en/2007/05/126213.shtml
Blackwater, for example, has created a new domestic division, as well as expanding their training facilities to other locations, including out west. And they’re making even more money, by hiring foreign mercs, at cheap prices.
so would a war with Iran - which disrupts oil supplies from the gulf tossing the US economy into chaos count as a Catastrophic Emergency? Just thinking out loud.
I heard this from Jim Ward topday on Stephanie Miller … goes to what I have been saying for years; there won’t be a 2008 election* because we will have a terrorist attack and -President- Dictator for Life GW Bush will take power.
(alternative is that we do have the 2008 elections and a Democrat wins, then we will have a Novemeber - January surprise and Bush takes over for life)
President Bush has signed a directive granting extraordinary powers to the office of the president in the event of a declared national emergency…
Like a Dem victory in 08?
And now for another little problem.
“(21) This directive:
(a) Shall be implemented consistent with applicable law and the authorities of agencies, or heads of agencies, vested by law, and subject to the availability of appropriations;
(b) Shall not be construed to impair or otherwise affect (i) the functions of the Director of the Office of Management and Budget relating to budget, administrative, and legislative proposals, or (ii) the authority of the Secretary of Defense over the Department of Defense, including the chain of command for military forces from the President, to the Secretary of Defense, to the commander of military forces, or military command and control procedures;
How can this be “consistant with applicable law”?
Who is the Director of the Office of Management and Budget? Why is this person exempt? Who is this person, and how to we reach him or her when this takes place?
Congress still has the power of the purse. If he tries to pull this off, they could, theoretically, immediately de-fund the military, or refuse to pass the next year’s budget. One hopes. No, I take that back given their performance…they will be totally out flanked and will do nothing, in fact they will probably be in either hiding or a state of mental paralysis incapable of doing anything but sputtering their dismay to the last uncensored broadcasts before the lights go out on a media blackout.
Bush has been quoted as saying it three times in public, before his handlers shut him up. Saying it more than once sort of takes out the jokey-humor intent. When Bush does his verbal flubs, he tends to say things that he really feels are true, but that are contrary to his false image of what he represents.
http://www.slate.com/id/76886/
One of the best and most revealing ones is: ” Our enemies are innovative and resourceful. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we..”
The fact that frightens me is that too many Americans don’t seem to have (post-9/11) a problem with the loss of liberties and the increased intrusion of Big Government into their lives.
If they have a problem it’s because Bush has been incompetent. He wants the power but isn’t cunning enough to get it outright and use it to accomplish what he wants (it occurs to me that one of the reasons he disliked Saddam was that he had achieved what Bush wanted - a true dictatorship).
The Authoritarian Cultists still worship authority, it’s just slowly dawning on them that Bush isn’t the best authority figure. They still want the torture, the arrests, the phone taps, the “extraordinary rendition”, and all the rest of the police state crap. To get it, they will just transfer their allegiance to some other figure.
I can only imagine the sorrow and disgust our founding fathers would express if they were here to view this tragic scene of a great inheritance traded for a few meager beans of “security”
http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Report_Cheney_aide_clearing_path_to_0524.html
Cheney’s team is the main instigator for wanting to expand the war against Iran. To do so, would be extraordinary folly, that our troop strength would indeed be broken. There would be no other resource other than a draft.
Couple that with a couple of “major terrorist plots uncovered”, and probably Congress, including some Dems would go along with it. The American people, however, would not.
If a draft for a very unpopular war situation was enacted, then we might see civil unrest of substantial proportions - not just the hippies and students, but angry soccer moms, Nascar dads and the disaffected middle class.
That’s when the Executive branch, Homeland Security would have to clamp down, for the “rapid development of new programs”, or “migratory movement” of population:
http://www.truthout.org/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi/47/17936
Once several thousands of citizens who are deemed a threat to domestic security are carted off, the fear will be enough that fewer people will want to protest or resist. Americans don’t really have that strong tradition of protesting en masse, like the French. Americans like to be comfortable; they have to really get angry to risk getting hurt.
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18725095.600
48 deep6 May 24th, 2007 at 4:23 pm
Let’s hear a bit more from the voting public,
Mike - I totally agree. The other real tragedy here is that even though Bush can’t successfully “catapult the propaganda” to the vast majority of the American public any longer, people are generally too sedated with long work hours, infotainment and consumerism to cut through all the shoddy editorializing that doubles for mainstream media reporting these days, such that they’ll actually know to wake up and give a shit that their democracy, our global power and the stability of the US dollar is crumbling before their very eyes.
I see this a lot among people (politically apathetic non-voters) I work with or just know from around the way… someone else will take care of it. People are generally uncomfortable with the idea that the government is spying on them, but sort of pass it off, cause, you know… . They assume that if they can’t see it, or it doesn’t personally inconvenience them, real civil rights violations either must not be going on at all, not going on often enough to think the complaints are anything but partisan bickering they’re not interested in hearing anyway, or will just be calmly dealt with in the next election cycle. There are though quite a few people I’ve spoken to, liberal and conservative, who rail against the Patriot Act, but again, consider their options to end it dependent on the next election cycle.
It really pisses me off that I have to remain employed to pay bills, because I’m personally at the point where I’m ready to grab my pitchfork and storm the White House. It’s foolish to think that the Democratic party apparatus will fight my battles for me. Reid’s too busy trying to reestablish legislative independence from the executive, and Pelosi’s trying to regroup social Democratic policies while throwing juicy bones to corporate America. I do like Howard Dean, and agree with the 50-state strategy, but the “big tent” thing is such an insulting joke, I constantly wonder what new constitutent group we’re going to throw to the wolves every day so that we can gain 6 or 8 white, heterosexual Christian male possible Democratic converts.
Anyhoo…. I’ve pretty much decided the battle is Bush vs. deep6, and I don’t expect to see Hillary or Obama in some cute spandex cheering me along. They’d more likely be off to the sides with Cheney, chatting with Lieberman, discussing how ridiculously NON-bipartisan I’m being….
That at least a third of Americans believe that Sept. 11 was an inside job speaks volumes. If a terrorist incident occurred again, I would concur that most Americans would feel it’s rigged, and then a panic would ensue. Hence the need for government to quell civilian disturbance. The current regime is more afraid of its own people than it is of terra-ism and Osama Bin Laden. Why would the government spend so much money on domestic surveillance, have thousands of people on no-fly lists, and monitor antiwar organizations?
http://www.inthesetimes.com/issue/27/02/feature3.shtml
The fact that frightens me is that too many Americans don’t seem to have (post-9/11) a problem with the loss of liberties and the increased intrusion of Big Government into their lives.
If they have a problem it’s because Bush has been incompetent. He wants the power but isn’t cunning enough to get it outright and use it to accomplish what he wants (it occurs to me that one of the reasons he disliked Saddam was that he had achieved what Bush wanted - a true dictatorship).
The Authoritarian Cultists still worship authority, it’s just slowly dawning on them that Bush isn’t the best authority figure. They still want the torture, the arrests, the phone taps, the “extraordinary rendition”, and all the rest of the police state crap. To get it, they will just transfer their allegiance to some other figure.
I can only imagine the sorrow and disgust our founding fathers would express if they were here to view this tragic scene of a great inheritance traded for a few meager beans of “security”
http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Report_Cheney_aide_clearing_path_to_0524.html
Cheney’s team is the main instigator for wanting to expand the war against Iran. To do so, would be extraordinary folly, that our troop strength would indeed be broken. There would be no other resource other than a draft.
Couple that with a couple of “major terrorist plots uncovered”, and probably Congress, including some Dems would go along with it. The American people, however, would not.
If a draft for a very unpopular war situation was enacted, then we might see civil unrest of substantial proportions - not just the hippies and students, but angry soccer moms, Nascar dads and the disaffected middle class.
That’s when the Executive branch, Homeland Security would have to clamp down, for the “rapid development of new programs”, or “migratory movement” of population:
http://www.truthout.org/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi/47/17936
Once several thousands of citizens who are deemed a threat to domestic security are carted off, the fear will be enough that fewer people will want to protest or resist. Americans don’t really have that strong tradition of protesting en masse, like the French. Americans like to be comfortable; they have to really get angry to risk getting hurt.
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18725095.600
48 deep6 May 24th, 2007 at 4:23 pm
Let’s hear a bit more from the voting public,
Mike - I totally agree. The other real tragedy here is that even though Bush can’t successfully “catapult the propaganda” to the vast majority of the American public any longer, people are generally too sedated with long work hours, infotainment and consumerism to cut through all the shoddy editorializing that doubles for mainstream media reporting these days, such that they’ll actually know to wake up and give a shit that their democracy, our global power and the stability of the US dollar is crumbling before their very eyes.
I see this a lot among people (politically apathetic non-voters) I work with or just know from around the way… someone else will take care of it. People are generally uncomfortable with the idea that the government is spying on them, but sort of pass it off, cause, you know… . They assume that if they can’t see it, or it doesn’t personally inconvenience them, real civil rights violations either must not be going on at all, not going on often enough to think the complaints are anything but partisan bickering they’re not interested in hearing anyway, or will just be calmly dealt with in the next election cycle. There are though quite a few people I’ve spoken to, liberal and conservative, who rail against the Patriot Act, but again, consider their options to end it dependent on the next election cycle.
It really pisses me off that I have to remain employed to pay bills, because I’m personally at the point where I’m ready to grab my pitchfork and storm the White House. It’s foolish to think that the Democratic party apparatus will fight my battles for me. Reid’s too busy trying to reestablish legislative independence from the executive, and Pelosi’s trying to regroup social Democratic policies while throwing juicy bones to corporate America. I do like Howard Dean, and agree with the 50-state strategy, but the “big tent” thing is such an insulting joke, I constantly wonder what new constitutent group we’re going to throw to the wolves every day so that we can gain 6 or 8 white, heterosexual Christian male possible Democratic converts.
Anyhoo…. I’ve pretty much decided the battle is Bush vs. deep6, and I don’t expect to see Hillary or Obama in some cute spandex cheering me along. They’d more likely be off to the sides with Cheney, chatting with Lieberman, discussing how ridiculously NON-bipartisan I’m being….
That at least a third of Americans believe that Sept. 11 was an inside job speaks volumes. If a terrorist incident occurred again, I would concur that most Americans would feel it’s rigged, and then a panic would ensue. Hence the need for government to quell civilian disturbance. The current regime is more afraid of its own people than it is of terra-ism and Osama Bin Laden. Why would the government spend so much money on domestic surveillance, have thousands of people on no-fly lists, and monitor antiwar organizations?
http://www.inthesetimes.com/issue/27/02/feature3.shtml
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10965509/site/newsweek/
In my opinion, if there is an election in 2008 is of little or no consequence. The Adminstration would not be so blatent (I think) as to completely write off the last of Democracy our current system outright. They’ve already fixed elections in Florida in 2000 and in 2004. I would more likely expect a natural disaster or a terrorist attack around election time such that the actual election would be underplayed to a bigger national emergency. From there, it’s really easy to fix the elections, but on a larger scale.
Short of massive election reform taking counting from hackable computer programs and partisan political officals and putting it back in the capable hands of the people, I expect the same. I’ll also fully admit, however, that I’m rather jaded and weary of what politicans do. It seems all I do is work for them (mostly thru taxes and an economic situation that gives those with lesser incomes very little leverage). Isn’t the government *for* the people as well? And People as in *everyone*–not just the select few.
I’m not an attorney, and it’s been a long day, so after reading through the directive(s) several times and not finding the points everyone is so flustered about, I’m confused.
Also, I work in this industry (continuity/recovery planning) which could be why I’m possibly, unconsciously making things fit into the ‘way we normally do it’.
The way I read the directive is that it is “the policy” but it’s not “the plan”. Typically in an organization, planners love to see a policy from the CEO or a joint statement from the Board members detailing their requirements for a continuity plan. Without a policy, normal people/employees are too busy with their day jobs to worry too much about it.
So again, the way I read it is this policy lays out the requirements of “the plan” (to be developed later… within 60 days) for the Executive Branch so that they can continue critical operations in the event of an unforeseen incident that might interrupt said critical operations. The policy just says that the President will lead the efforts to develop a plan (6) and they’ve created a position to enforce creation/validation of “the plans” for the Executive Branch. And while (12) says the President determines the “COGCON” level, I think that’s exclusive to the Executive branch. I see nothing that says anyone else has to listen to/respect it.
Finally, the other thing that makes this confusing…. planners know that in a real disaster, the place for C-level management is in a quiet hotel room with coffee, donuts, a TV and one telephone. They’re not trained to deal with such a situation and their management decision (made during planning) is to toss over the reign’s to someone who is trained if such a situation arises. At that point, their job becomes mostly PR, calming the shareholders and maintaining the appearance of ‘business as usual’.
So… I don’t see where this policy gives King George any more power than he already has. The policy only applies to the Executive Branch and to their planning.
Anyone to clear my confusion?
IMPEACHMENT PROCEDINGS WOULD NO DOUBT CONSTITUTE A GRAVE NATIONAL EMERGENCY IN THE BUSH BUNKER. GOT IT!
NSPD-51: Bush prepares martial lawWorld War 4 Report, NY - May 24, 2007NSPD-51/ HSPD-20 appears to supersede the National Emergency Act by creating the new position of National Continuity Coordinator without any specific act of ...
Bush's detention facilitiesWorldNetDaily, OR - May 29, 2007NSPD-51/HSPD-20, published on the White House website, rescinds Presidential Decision Directive 67 signed by Bill Clinton Oct. 21, 1998, and establishes a ...
The Bush push to militarize AmericaWorldNetDaily, OR - Jun 4, 2007NSPD-51 and HSPD-20 make no specific reference to the National Security Act under USC Title 50 or the requirement of that act that the president bring a ...
Feds prepping for 'continuity' hub?WorldNetDaily, OR - Jun 5, 2007As WND previously reported, NSPD-51 and HSPD-20 were posted on the White House website May 9, without any comment or discussion from the administration in ...
WHILE NO ONE WAS LOOKING / BUSH APPOINTS HIMSELF DICTATOROpEdNews, PA - May 26, 2007He laid this all out in a document entitled "National Security Presidential Directive/NSPD 51" and "Homeland Security Presidential Directive/HSPD-20. ...
New Law of the Land Bypasses CongressTanasi Journal, TN - May 25, 2007NSPD-51 and HSPD-20 appear to supersede the the National Emergency Act through the creation of the new position of national continuity coordinator. ...
Bush makes new grab for powerMontgomery Advertiser, AL - May 31, 2007... visit to Jamestown, the White House released National Security Presidential Directive/NSPD 51 and Homeland Security Presidential Directive/HSPD 20. ...
Wisconsin Democracy Campaign: Business outgives labor by a wide marginWisPolitics.com, WI - May 29, 2007But no one with more than a passing interest in democracy could help but notice a White House directive known cryptically as NSPD 51 and HSPD 20. ...
Whatever you say, Mr. Dictator. We feel safe now.San Francisco Chronicle, USA - May 30, 2007... Presidential Directive/NSPD 51 and the Homeland Security Presidential Directive/HSPD-20, wherein it is calmly and furtively revealed that, in essence,
Reader ReactionsConsortium News - Jun 5, 2007... and Homeland Security Presidential Directive NATIONAL SECURITY PRESIDENTIAL DIRECTIVE/NSPD 51; HOMELAND SECURITY PRESIDENTIAL DIRECTIVE/HSPD-20. ...
Columnist's expose reveals planning for 'domestic emergencies'WorldNetDaily, OR - Jun 4, 2007And as WND has reported, the new National Security (NSPD-51) and Homeland Security (HSPD-20) Presidential Directives signed May 6 give the president ...
National Continuity Implementation Plan: great idea but ...Continuity Central (press release), UK - May 18, 2007... Security Presidential Directive (the combined National Security Presidential Directive/NSPD 51 and Homeland Security Presidential Directive/HSPD-20) ...
Criminal leaders make an additional power grab!NewsBusters - Jun 4, 2007... Bush issued two new presidential directives, National Security Presidential Directive/NSPD 51 and Homeland Security Presidential Directive/HSPD -20. ...
George Bush Claims he is Adolf HitlerThe Spoof (satire), UK - May 24, 2007His new powers are spelled out in the documents "National Security Presidential Directive/NSPD 51" and "Homeland Security Presidential Directive/HSPD-20. ...
Paying the price with our freedomPalestine Herald Press, TX - May 30, 2007On May 9, Bush signed the National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive, NSPD-51 and HSPD-20. The directive creates a new position in an ...
George W. Bush Is GOP's Bill ClintonThe Conservative Voice, NC - May 27, 2007... and Homeland Security Presidential Directive,' with the dual designation of NSPD-51, as a National Security Presidential Directive, and HSPD-20, ...
The hangover of a lifetimeBrattleboro Reformer, United States - May 25, 2007Then take a look at National Security Presidential Directive/NSPD 51, also called Homeland Security Presidential Directive/HSPD-20. ...
Undernews: The Coup In Waiting Peeks Out AgainScoop.co.nz, New Zealand - May 23, 2007He laid this all out in a document entitled National Security Presidential Directive NSPD 51 and Homeland Security Presidential Directive HSPD-20. ...
-Order for emergencies apparently gives authority without ...WorldNetDaily, OR - May 22, 2007... issued with the dual designation of NSPD-51, as a National Security Presidential Directive, and HSPD-20, as a Homeland Security Presidential Directive. ...
Bush Anoints Himself as the Insurer of Constitutional Government ...Progressive.org, WI - May 18, 2007He laid this all out in a document entitled “National Security Presidential Directive/NSPD 51” and “Homeland Security Presidential Directive/HSPD-20. ...
Paying the price with our freedom Palestine Herald Press, TX - May 30, 2007On May 9, Bush signed the National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive, NSPD-51 and HSPD-20. The directive creates a new position in an ...
George W. Bush Is GOP's Bill ClintonThe Conservative Voice, NC - May 27, 2007... and Homeland Security Presidential Directive,' with the dual designation of NSPD-51, as a National Security Presidential Directive, and HSPD-20, ...
George W. Bush is GOP's Bill ClintonSmall Gov Times, VA - May 26, 2007... and Homeland Security Presidential Directive,’ with the dual designation of NSPD-51, as a National Security Presidential Directive, and HSPD-20, ...
Political Wushu II: Double Double CrossersPolitical Cortex, NY - May 26, 2007... and Homeland Security Presidential Directive," with the dual designation of NSPD-51, as a National Security Presidential Directive, and HSPD-20, ...
Political Wushu II: Double Double CrossersePluribus Media - May 26, 2007... and Homeland Security Presidential Directive," with the dual designation of NSPD-51, as a National Security Presidential Directive, and HSPD-20, ...
George W. Bush Is GOP's Bill ClintonAmerican Chronicle, CA - May 26, 2007... and Homeland Security Presidential Directive,' with the dual designation of NSPD-51, as a National Security Presidential Directive, and HSPD-20, ...
George W. Bush Is GOP's Bill ClintonCanada Free Press, Canada - May 25, 2007... and Homeland Security Presidential Directive,' with the dual designation of NSPD-51, as a National Security Presidential Directive, and HSPD-20, ...
George W. Bush is GOP's Bill Clintonrenewamerica.us, DC - May 25, 2007... and Homeland Security Presidential Directive,' with the dual designation of NSPD-51, as a National Security Presidential Directive, and HSPD-20, ...
George W. Bush Is GOP's Bill ClintonThe Baltimore Chronicle, MD - May 25, 2007... and Homeland Security Presidential Directive,' with the dual designation of NSPD-51, as a National Security Presidential Directive, and HSPD-20, ...
Undernews: The Coup In Waiting Peeks Out AgainScoop.co.nz, New Zealand - May 23, 2007He laid this all out in a document entitled National Security Presidential Directive NSPD 51 and Homeland Security Presidential Directive HSPD-20. ...
Order for emergencies apparently gives authority without ...WorldNetDaily, OR - May 22, 2007... issued with the dual designation of NSPD-51, as a National Security Presidential Directive, and HSPD-20, as a Homeland Security Presidential Directive. ...
Bush makes power grabWorldNetDaily, OR - May 22, 2007... and Homeland Security Presidential Directive," with the dual designation of NSPD-51, as a National Security Presidential Directive, and HSPD-20, ...
-Order for emergencies apparently gives authority without ...WorldNetDaily, OR - May 22, 2007... issued with the dual designation of NSPD-51, as a National Security Presidential Directive, and HSPD-20, as a Homeland Security Presidential Directive. ...
Bush Anoints Himself as the Insurer of Constitutional Government ...Progressive.org, WI - May 18, 2007He laid this all out in a document entitled “National Security Presidential Directive/NSPD 51” and “Homeland Security Presidential Directive/HSPD-20. ..
New presidential directive gives Bush dictatorial powerOnline Journal, FL - Jun 7, 2007(10) Federal Government COOP, COG, and ECG plans and operations shall be appropriately integrated with the emergency plans and capabilities of State, local, ...
Criminal leaders make an additional power grab!NewsBusters - Jun 4, 2007Even the declaration of the national emergency does not appear to require any Congressional action or oversight. The implementation plan to be developed is ...
About our 'dictator' - The Boston Globe
``We're seeing clearly now that Bush thought 9/11 gave him license to act like a dictator," wrote Jonathan Alter in Newsweek last December. ...www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/07/05/about_our_dictator/ - Similar pages
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Kent Southard
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Freedom Rider: John Conyers and the Bush Dictatorship by BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley
Hardly anyone in the corporate media seemed to notice when, last month, George Bush gave himself the power to run the government all by himself in situations of "catastrophic emergency." It would also be up to Bush to decide just what constitutes such an emergency - natural disaster, economic dislocation, or even launching of another of Bush's premeditated wars, who knows? Democratic leadership remained silent as Bush set the stage for dictatorship-at-will. It's past time for Rep. John Conyers to put impeachment back "on the table" - before it's too late.
"If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator." - George W. Bush
According to an old saying, many a truth is often said in jest. Not enough people took notice on December 18, 2000 when George W. Bush said those awful words. On that date the president-elect went to Capital Hill for a get acquainted session with Congressional leaders. He emerged from that meeting with his well known smirk, and gave Congress and the American people the finger. No one should be shocked when a man who tells jokes about dictatorship turns into a dictator.
Without fanfare, or announcement of any kind, the president recently signed a directive which states that in case of a "catastrophic emergency" the "President shall lead the activities of the Federal Government for ensuring constitutional government." What is a catastrophic emergency? Well, it is anything that Bush says it is.
The document, National Continuity Policy, was signed by the president on May 9, 2007 and unceremoniously posted on the White House website. It defines catastrophic emergency as "any incident, regardless of location, that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the U.S. population, infrastructure, environment, economy, or government function."
That language describes hurricanes, earthquakes, black outs, flu epidemics, terror attacks, or mass demonstrations. If location doesn't matter, the president can usurp the constitutionally guaranteed powers of Congress and the judiciary because of an attack on Iran or a surge of casualties in Iraq. L'etat c'est Bush.
The president announced that he is crowning himself king and thereby making his sick wishes come true. What should be a headline in every major newspaper in the nation has been covered only by the Boston Globe. None of the television networks have said a word nor has a peep been heard from Congress.
This announcement is consistent with other Bush administration actions. In 2006 the federal government awarded a contract to KBR, a subsidiary of Cheney's Halliburton, to build "detention centers" in case of a national immigration emergency. Homeland Security has already established an immigrant detention facility in Texas, the T. Don Hutto center, that has incarcerated entire families, including children. When U.N. human rights investigator Jorge Bustamante showed up for a pre-arranged visit he was refused entry and turned away.
Congress has also been silent about this blatant power grab and usurpation of its authority. The National Emergencies Act gives Congress the right to prevent open ended declarations of states of emergency, but that act's existence is not very comforting. If Congress won't even speak up about the National Continuity Policy, why would they speak up if Bush declared an emergency and told them to go to hell? Congressional Democratic leaders Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi would once again go along to get along as the Bushites began a reign of terror against democracy.
Reid and Pelosi have their own little reign of terror in Washington. They have cracked the whip and told progressives to shut up and toe the party line. John Conyers is one of their victims. He has been in Congress longer than all but a few of his colleagues and has been called the conscience of the Congressional Black Caucus. He now serves as Chairman of the House Judiciary committee. Ever since the Republican victory in 1994, progressives have hoped for a return to Democratic control and with it the return of stalwarts like John Conyers to committee chairmanships.
While Democrats were in the wilderness, Conyers spoke often about impeachment and unequivocally stated that he intended to hold hearings as soon as he had the opportunity. In 2005 Judiciary Committee staff issued a report recommending that Congress establish a select committee to investigate whether or not the President Bush and Vice President Cheney had committed impeachable offenses.
Once Conyers had that power, he refused to use it. He was forced into silence by Pelosi, who said that impeachment is "off the table." Conyers had a strange defense. He called himself a liar:
"In this campaign, there was an orchestrated right-wing effort to distort my position on impeachment. The incoming speaker has said that impeachment is off the table. I am in total agreement with her on this issue: Impeachment is off the table." Just to make certain he wasn't misunderstood, Conyers added, "Impeachment would not be good for the American people. The country does not want or need any more paralyzed partisan government."
It is time to stop letting Conyers and the rest of his colleagues off the hook. They too are complicit in the ever increasing erosion of our civil rights and civil liberties. A coordinated impeachment effort might slow down or even stop the Bush coronation.
The long years of waiting for Conyers, a committed progressive for decades, to chair the House Judiciary Committee were wasted. His most recent statement is not much better than his self-repudiation after the November 2006 election. He now claims to have "been supportive of that movement (for impeachment). I encourage that nationwide." Well, that is awfully big of him.
The next round of demonstrations in Washington should be directed at the Democrats, including members of the Congressional Black Caucus. Democratic timidity only encourages the Republicans. When a hurricane, terror plot or bird flu pandemic begins, we may as well pack our bags and join immigrants at the Hutto detention center. Immigrants were just used for practice. Bush is preparing for the real thing and there isn't anyone in a position to stop him who is willing to do it.
Margaret Kimberley's Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BAR. Ms. Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley(at)BlackAgandaReport.Com. Ms. Kimberley' maintains an edifying and frequently updated blog at freedomrider.blogspot.com.
In my opinion, if there is an election in 2008 is of little or no consequence. The Adminstration would not be so blatent (I think) as to completely write off the last of Democracy our current system outright. They’ve already fixed elections in Florida in 2000 and in 2004. I would more likely expect a natural disaster or a terrorist attack around election time such that the actual election would be underplayed to a bigger national emergency. From there, it’s really easy to fix the elections, but on a larger scale.
Short of massive election reform taking counting from hackable computer programs and partisan political officals and putting it back in the capable hands of the people, I expect the same. I’ll also fully admit, however, that I’m rather jaded and weary of what politicans do. It seems all I do is work for them (mostly thru taxes and an economic situation that gives those with lesser incomes very little leverage). Isn’t the government *for* the people as well? And People as in *everyone*–not just the select few.
I’m not an attorney, and it’s been a long day, so after reading through the directive(s) several times and not finding the points everyone is so flustered about, I’m confused.
Also, I work in this industry (continuity/recovery planning) which could be why I’m possibly, unconsciously making things fit into the ‘way we normally do it’.
The way I read the directive is that it is “the policy” but it’s not “the plan”. Typically in an organization, planners love to see a policy from the CEO or a joint statement from the Board members detailing their requirements for a continuity plan. Without a policy, normal people/employees are too busy with their day jobs to worry too much about it.
So again, the way I read it is this policy lays out the requirements of “the plan” (to be developed later… within 60 days) for the Executive Branch so that they can continue critical operations in the event of an unforeseen incident that might interrupt said critical operations. The policy just says that the President will lead the efforts to develop a plan (6) and they’ve created a position to enforce creation/validation of “the plans” for the Executive Branch. And while (12) says the President determines the “COGCON” level, I think that’s exclusive to the Executive branch. I see nothing that says anyone else has to listen to/respect it.
Finally, the other thing that makes this confusing…. planners know that in a real disaster, the place for C-level management is in a quiet hotel room with coffee, donuts, a TV and one telephone. They’re not trained to deal with such a situation and their management decision (made during planning) is to toss over the reign’s to someone who is trained if such a situation arises. At that point, their job becomes mostly PR, calming the shareholders and maintaining the appearance of ‘business as usual’.
So… I don’t see where this policy gives King George any more power than he already has. The policy only applies to the Executive Branch and to their planning.
Anyone to clear my confusion?
IMPEACHMENT PROCEDINGS WOULD NO DOUBT CONSTITUTE A GRAVE NATIONAL EMERGENCY IN THE BUSH BUNKER. GOT IT!
NSPD-51: Bush prepares martial lawWorld War 4 Report, NY - May 24, 2007NSPD-51/ HSPD-20 appears to supersede the National Emergency Act by creating the new position of National Continuity Coordinator without any specific act of ...
Bush's detention facilitiesWorldNetDaily, OR - May 29, 2007NSPD-51/HSPD-20, published on the White House website, rescinds Presidential Decision Directive 67 signed by Bill Clinton Oct. 21, 1998, and establishes a ...
The Bush push to militarize AmericaWorldNetDaily, OR - Jun 4, 2007NSPD-51 and HSPD-20 make no specific reference to the National Security Act under USC Title 50 or the requirement of that act that the president bring a ...
Feds prepping for 'continuity' hub?WorldNetDaily, OR - Jun 5, 2007As WND previously reported, NSPD-51 and HSPD-20 were posted on the White House website May 9, without any comment or discussion from the administration in ...
WHILE NO ONE WAS LOOKING / BUSH APPOINTS HIMSELF DICTATOROpEdNews, PA - May 26, 2007He laid this all out in a document entitled "National Security Presidential Directive/NSPD 51" and "Homeland Security Presidential Directive/HSPD-20. ...
New Law of the Land Bypasses CongressTanasi Journal, TN - May 25, 2007NSPD-51 and HSPD-20 appear to supersede the the National Emergency Act through the creation of the new position of national continuity coordinator. ...
Bush makes new grab for powerMontgomery Advertiser, AL - May 31, 2007... visit to Jamestown, the White House released National Security Presidential Directive/NSPD 51 and Homeland Security Presidential Directive/HSPD 20. ...
Wisconsin Democracy Campaign: Business outgives labor by a wide marginWisPolitics.com, WI - May 29, 2007But no one with more than a passing interest in democracy could help but notice a White House directive known cryptically as NSPD 51 and HSPD 20. ...
Whatever you say, Mr. Dictator. We feel safe now.San Francisco Chronicle, USA - May 30, 2007... Presidential Directive/NSPD 51 and the Homeland Security Presidential Directive/HSPD-20, wherein it is calmly and furtively revealed that, in essence,
Reader ReactionsConsortium News - Jun 5, 2007... and Homeland Security Presidential Directive NATIONAL SECURITY PRESIDENTIAL DIRECTIVE/NSPD 51; HOMELAND SECURITY PRESIDENTIAL DIRECTIVE/HSPD-20. ...
Columnist's expose reveals planning for 'domestic emergencies'WorldNetDaily, OR - Jun 4, 2007And as WND has reported, the new National Security (NSPD-51) and Homeland Security (HSPD-20) Presidential Directives signed May 6 give the president ...
National Continuity Implementation Plan: great idea but ...Continuity Central (press release), UK - May 18, 2007... Security Presidential Directive (the combined National Security Presidential Directive/NSPD 51 and Homeland Security Presidential Directive/HSPD-20) ...
Criminal leaders make an additional power grab!NewsBusters - Jun 4, 2007... Bush issued two new presidential directives, National Security Presidential Directive/NSPD 51 and Homeland Security Presidential Directive/HSPD -20. ...
George Bush Claims he is Adolf HitlerThe Spoof (satire), UK - May 24, 2007His new powers are spelled out in the documents "National Security Presidential Directive/NSPD 51" and "Homeland Security Presidential Directive/HSPD-20. ...
Paying the price with our freedomPalestine Herald Press, TX - May 30, 2007On May 9, Bush signed the National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive, NSPD-51 and HSPD-20. The directive creates a new position in an ...
George W. Bush Is GOP's Bill ClintonThe Conservative Voice, NC - May 27, 2007... and Homeland Security Presidential Directive,' with the dual designation of NSPD-51, as a National Security Presidential Directive, and HSPD-20, ...
The hangover of a lifetimeBrattleboro Reformer, United States - May 25, 2007Then take a look at National Security Presidential Directive/NSPD 51, also called Homeland Security Presidential Directive/HSPD-20. ...
Undernews: The Coup In Waiting Peeks Out AgainScoop.co.nz, New Zealand - May 23, 2007He laid this all out in a document entitled National Security Presidential Directive NSPD 51 and Homeland Security Presidential Directive HSPD-20. ...
-Order for emergencies apparently gives authority without ...WorldNetDaily, OR - May 22, 2007... issued with the dual designation of NSPD-51, as a National Security Presidential Directive, and HSPD-20, as a Homeland Security Presidential Directive. ...
Bush Anoints Himself as the Insurer of Constitutional Government ...Progressive.org, WI - May 18, 2007He laid this all out in a document entitled “National Security Presidential Directive/NSPD 51” and “Homeland Security Presidential Directive/HSPD-20. ...
Paying the price with our freedom Palestine Herald Press, TX - May 30, 2007On May 9, Bush signed the National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive, NSPD-51 and HSPD-20. The directive creates a new position in an ...
George W. Bush Is GOP's Bill ClintonThe Conservative Voice, NC - May 27, 2007... and Homeland Security Presidential Directive,' with the dual designation of NSPD-51, as a National Security Presidential Directive, and HSPD-20, ...
George W. Bush is GOP's Bill ClintonSmall Gov Times, VA - May 26, 2007... and Homeland Security Presidential Directive,’ with the dual designation of NSPD-51, as a National Security Presidential Directive, and HSPD-20, ...
Political Wushu II: Double Double CrossersPolitical Cortex, NY - May 26, 2007... and Homeland Security Presidential Directive," with the dual designation of NSPD-51, as a National Security Presidential Directive, and HSPD-20, ...
Political Wushu II: Double Double CrossersePluribus Media - May 26, 2007... and Homeland Security Presidential Directive," with the dual designation of NSPD-51, as a National Security Presidential Directive, and HSPD-20, ...
George W. Bush Is GOP's Bill ClintonAmerican Chronicle, CA - May 26, 2007... and Homeland Security Presidential Directive,' with the dual designation of NSPD-51, as a National Security Presidential Directive, and HSPD-20, ...
George W. Bush Is GOP's Bill ClintonCanada Free Press, Canada - May 25, 2007... and Homeland Security Presidential Directive,' with the dual designation of NSPD-51, as a National Security Presidential Directive, and HSPD-20, ...
George W. Bush is GOP's Bill Clintonrenewamerica.us, DC - May 25, 2007... and Homeland Security Presidential Directive,' with the dual designation of NSPD-51, as a National Security Presidential Directive, and HSPD-20, ...
George W. Bush Is GOP's Bill ClintonThe Baltimore Chronicle, MD - May 25, 2007... and Homeland Security Presidential Directive,' with the dual designation of NSPD-51, as a National Security Presidential Directive, and HSPD-20, ...
Undernews: The Coup In Waiting Peeks Out AgainScoop.co.nz, New Zealand - May 23, 2007He laid this all out in a document entitled National Security Presidential Directive NSPD 51 and Homeland Security Presidential Directive HSPD-20. ...
Order for emergencies apparently gives authority without ...WorldNetDaily, OR - May 22, 2007... issued with the dual designation of NSPD-51, as a National Security Presidential Directive, and HSPD-20, as a Homeland Security Presidential Directive. ...
Bush makes power grabWorldNetDaily, OR - May 22, 2007... and Homeland Security Presidential Directive," with the dual designation of NSPD-51, as a National Security Presidential Directive, and HSPD-20, ...
-Order for emergencies apparently gives authority without ...WorldNetDaily, OR - May 22, 2007... issued with the dual designation of NSPD-51, as a National Security Presidential Directive, and HSPD-20, as a Homeland Security Presidential Directive. ...
Bush Anoints Himself as the Insurer of Constitutional Government ...Progressive.org, WI - May 18, 2007He laid this all out in a document entitled “National Security Presidential Directive/NSPD 51” and “Homeland Security Presidential Directive/HSPD-20. ..
New presidential directive gives Bush dictatorial powerOnline Journal, FL - Jun 7, 2007(10) Federal Government COOP, COG, and ECG plans and operations shall be appropriately integrated with the emergency plans and capabilities of State, local, ...
Criminal leaders make an additional power grab!NewsBusters - Jun 4, 2007Even the declaration of the national emergency does not appear to require any Congressional action or oversight. The implementation plan to be developed is ...
About our 'dictator' - The Boston Globe
``We're seeing clearly now that Bush thought 9/11 gave him license to act like a dictator," wrote Jonathan Alter in Newsweek last December. ...www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/07/05/about_our_dictator/ - Similar pages
A Democratic Dictatorship by Jacob G. Hornberger
A dictator has the power to take whatever actions he wants without ... Hitler in discussing the dictatorial powers that President Bush is now exercising. ...www.lewrockwell.com/hornberger/hornberger99.html - 30k - Cached - Similar pages
Kent Southard
Now, see, George W. Bush has declared himself dictator, or divinely anointed king, take your pick, and this declaration didn't even cause a pebble's ripple ...www.bushwatch.com/kent.htm - 100k - Cached - Similar pages
Issues and Action - Congress.org
The general topic of this message is Civil Liberties:. Subject: It's Official Bush is now a dictator To: President George Bush Rep. Jim Ramstad ...www.congress.org/congressorg/bio/userletter/?id=334&letter_id=1215377506 - 27k - Cached - Similar pages
The Quiet Dictatorship
This power is at the heart of totalitarianism, and now that George W. Bush has seized it, he is nothing more than a dictator. ...www.irregulartimes.com/thequietdictator.html - 11k - Cached - Similar pages
Now We Know How A Dictator Can Game The Presidency
Fearmongering is a telltale sign of a dictator. And the US has one at 1600 right now. When will the 30% of what's left of Bush supporters realize they're ...blogcritics.org/archives/2006/05/24/135034.php - 112k - Cached - Similar pages
The Judicially-Selected Dictator's Pre-Emptive War
Then how do the arguments for going to war that Bush has made endlessly on the ... W. Bush is now the closest thing in a long time to dictator of the world. ...www.commondreams.org/views03/0322-09.htm - 17k - Cached - Similar pages
Newsvine - I am now an official dictator
Bush is now really a dictator. CNN and other News corporations should cover this story. As a new user, you may notice a few temporary content restrictions. ...deprogramming.newsvine.com/_news/2007/05/30/746556-i-am-now-an-official-dictator - 20k - Cached - Similar pages
Freedom Rider: John Conyers and the Bush Dictatorship by BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley
Hardly anyone in the corporate media seemed to notice when, last month, George Bush gave himself the power to run the government all by himself in situations of "catastrophic emergency." It would also be up to Bush to decide just what constitutes such an emergency - natural disaster, economic dislocation, or even launching of another of Bush's premeditated wars, who knows? Democratic leadership remained silent as Bush set the stage for dictatorship-at-will. It's past time for Rep. John Conyers to put impeachment back "on the table" - before it's too late.
"If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator." - George W. Bush
According to an old saying, many a truth is often said in jest. Not enough people took notice on December 18, 2000 when George W. Bush said those awful words. On that date the president-elect went to Capital Hill for a get acquainted session with Congressional leaders. He emerged from that meeting with his well known smirk, and gave Congress and the American people the finger. No one should be shocked when a man who tells jokes about dictatorship turns into a dictator.
Without fanfare, or announcement of any kind, the president recently signed a directive which states that in case of a "catastrophic emergency" the "President shall lead the activities of the Federal Government for ensuring constitutional government." What is a catastrophic emergency? Well, it is anything that Bush says it is.
The document, National Continuity Policy, was signed by the president on May 9, 2007 and unceremoniously posted on the White House website. It defines catastrophic emergency as "any incident, regardless of location, that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the U.S. population, infrastructure, environment, economy, or government function."
That language describes hurricanes, earthquakes, black outs, flu epidemics, terror attacks, or mass demonstrations. If location doesn't matter, the president can usurp the constitutionally guaranteed powers of Congress and the judiciary because of an attack on Iran or a surge of casualties in Iraq. L'etat c'est Bush.
The president announced that he is crowning himself king and thereby making his sick wishes come true. What should be a headline in every major newspaper in the nation has been covered only by the Boston Globe. None of the television networks have said a word nor has a peep been heard from Congress.
This announcement is consistent with other Bush administration actions. In 2006 the federal government awarded a contract to KBR, a subsidiary of Cheney's Halliburton, to build "detention centers" in case of a national immigration emergency. Homeland Security has already established an immigrant detention facility in Texas, the T. Don Hutto center, that has incarcerated entire families, including children. When U.N. human rights investigator Jorge Bustamante showed up for a pre-arranged visit he was refused entry and turned away.
Congress has also been silent about this blatant power grab and usurpation of its authority. The National Emergencies Act gives Congress the right to prevent open ended declarations of states of emergency, but that act's existence is not very comforting. If Congress won't even speak up about the National Continuity Policy, why would they speak up if Bush declared an emergency and told them to go to hell? Congressional Democratic leaders Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi would once again go along to get along as the Bushites began a reign of terror against democracy.
Reid and Pelosi have their own little reign of terror in Washington. They have cracked the whip and told progressives to shut up and toe the party line. John Conyers is one of their victims. He has been in Congress longer than all but a few of his colleagues and has been called the conscience of the Congressional Black Caucus. He now serves as Chairman of the House Judiciary committee. Ever since the Republican victory in 1994, progressives have hoped for a return to Democratic control and with it the return of stalwarts like John Conyers to committee chairmanships.
While Democrats were in the wilderness, Conyers spoke often about impeachment and unequivocally stated that he intended to hold hearings as soon as he had the opportunity. In 2005 Judiciary Committee staff issued a report recommending that Congress establish a select committee to investigate whether or not the President Bush and Vice President Cheney had committed impeachable offenses.
Once Conyers had that power, he refused to use it. He was forced into silence by Pelosi, who said that impeachment is "off the table." Conyers had a strange defense. He called himself a liar:
"In this campaign, there was an orchestrated right-wing effort to distort my position on impeachment. The incoming speaker has said that impeachment is off the table. I am in total agreement with her on this issue: Impeachment is off the table." Just to make certain he wasn't misunderstood, Conyers added, "Impeachment would not be good for the American people. The country does not want or need any more paralyzed partisan government."
It is time to stop letting Conyers and the rest of his colleagues off the hook. They too are complicit in the ever increasing erosion of our civil rights and civil liberties. A coordinated impeachment effort might slow down or even stop the Bush coronation.
The long years of waiting for Conyers, a committed progressive for decades, to chair the House Judiciary Committee were wasted. His most recent statement is not much better than his self-repudiation after the November 2006 election. He now claims to have "been supportive of that movement (for impeachment). I encourage that nationwide." Well, that is awfully big of him.
The next round of demonstrations in Washington should be directed at the Democrats, including members of the Congressional Black Caucus. Democratic timidity only encourages the Republicans. When a hurricane, terror plot or bird flu pandemic begins, we may as well pack our bags and join immigrants at the Hutto detention center. Immigrants were just used for practice. Bush is preparing for the real thing and there isn't anyone in a position to stop him who is willing to do it.
Margaret Kimberley's Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BAR. Ms. Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley(at)BlackAgandaReport.Com. Ms. Kimberley' maintains an edifying and frequently updated blog at freedomrider.blogspot.com.
More of her work is also available at her Black Agenda Report archive page.
May 22, 2007
An Open Letter to John Conyers
Meet Us in Detroit
By JEFFREY KOLAKOWSKI
Dear Mr. Conyers,
On May 29, 2007-as you already know-there will be a Town Hall discussion on the possible impeachment of George W. Bush, President of the United States. In your position as chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, it is imperative that you join this discussion, and thoroughly absorb the message of the speakers.
In recent days, the Detroit City Council passed a unanimous resolution calling for impeachment of both George Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. This resolution was passed within hours of its introduction, and it passed unanimously. These are your constituents, Mr. Conyers, and they are calling on you to act. May I remind you that you represent the people that passed and supported this resolution, not Nancy Pelosi, nor the rest of the congressional Democratic leadership. You owe your constituents a chance to be heard, and not just in your praises, but in the course of action they expect you to take as their true representative.
I went to a town hall meeting, attended by you, back in February that was to be centered on impeachment. I arrived with carefully written remarks about why it is your duty to impeachment George W. Bush. To my great disappointment, the meeting had nothing to do with impeachment. Instead, it turned into a rally with speaker after speaker bemoaning the Bush administration, while praising you and the Democratic presidential contenders. That is all you wanted to talk about that day. Not impeachment, which you dismissed as impractical, but the upcoming 2008 presidential race. Never mind that the next Democratic president will inherit the awesome powers usurped by Bush for the executive. I have to assume that that doesn't matter to you as long as a Democrat holds those powers.
I fail to see how you can find solace in the prospect of a Democratic president when the last one has done so much damage to your constituency. NAFTA, and other such trade agreements cannot be good for the people of your district, as they drain manufacturing jobs. Welfare reform has certainly spread pain through your district, as well. The telecommunications act has left your constituents less informed and mislead by the mainstream media. In fact, much of the groundwork for the most egregious legislation championed by the current administration was laid by Clinton. Do you find comfort in the fact that legislation harmful to your constituents was signed into law by a Democratic president?
We cannot fix our current constitutional crisis by waiting for the next "good" president. In order for the executive branch to be checked by congress, congress needs to use all of the powers at its disposal. What precedent do we set by not moving to impeach? If this president does not deserve impeachment, no future president ever will. By failing to act, you and the rest of the Democratic leadership are giving a blank check to all future presidents to act as they will with little or no regard for the will of the people. Your inertia will condemn the American people to the fate of hoping for the next benevolent dictator.
It would seem that your most courageous acts have occurred only when you were in no danger of having to follow through with any concrete action. You held your famous "basement hearings" when the Democrats were in the minority. Also, while in the minority, your office compiled a major report outlining the constitutional offenses of the current administration. While in the minority, you were free to make the case for impeachment. Yet now-when you hold real power- you refrain from taking the trail that you have blazed. You lack the courage to follow through with your convictions, or the will of your constituents.
When you wrote the forward to your book, were you thinking of the day when you would be in a position to act on the information accumulated by your office. I find these words telling. You say "I believe it is vital that we document these allegations, learn from our mistakes, and consider laws and safeguards necessary to prevent their recurrence." Were you preemptively letting yourself off the hook here, because surely you must know that we do have laws and safeguards necessary to prevent their recurrence. Those laws are written into the United States constitution, and the safeguard is called impeachment. We do not need to write new laws to enforce a constitution that already exists. We need law makers that understand that malfeasance in government needs to be addressed above all political considerations.
I sat in another meeting that you attended early in 2006. The theme of this meeting was that everything must be done to elect Democrats to office, regardless of their views on the Iraq War. As you sat at the head of that meeting, it was made perfectly clear by the moderator that Democrats must take control of congress at all costs, because in doing so, you would be made chairman of the judiciary. It was inferred that this alone was enough to bring accountability to this administration. Of all that I have learned about the Democratic party, I found this to be hardly convincing. By your inaction thus far, you are confirming my skepticism.
I am sure that you would argue that you are holding Bush and his cohorts to account by holding the hearings you have in regard to specific unseemly acts committed by this administration. But these hearings are only meant to inflict political damage on the president. At 30% approval, or thereabouts, how much more political damage can be done? Political damage may serve the Democratic party in its bid for power in 2008, but it does nothing of real substance for the electorate. Only by criminalizing the acts of the president and vice-president can we reclaim from the executive what they have stolen from the people. This must be done so that future administrations will know there are real consequences to deceiving the American public-and ignoring the constitution.
You invited Ray McGovern to those basement hearings and were very eager to listen to his damning testimony about the conduct of this administration. I believe that if you fail to appear at this meeting, it will be because of your fear of being humiliated by your own words. McGovern, as well as the other speakers are not about to back down when you say that impeachment is impractical, or that there isn't enough time. People in your district, as well as the majority of people in this country are longing to hear the truth stated publicly and officially about the constitutional breaches of this president and administration. And they are longing to hear these truths in a manner that will bear real consequences against the perpetrators. They are longing for justice-justice that you deny them with your inaction.
Mr. Conyers, I am daring you to prove me wrong. Prove me wrong by attending the meeting on May 29, and by standing up for the people who voted you into office. Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Hillary Clinton did not vote for you as their representative, and they are not the people you owe your allegiance to. On impeachment, your constituents have spoken loud and clear. It is your duty to hear their call, and act accordingly.
Sincerely,
Jeffrey Kolakowski
Jeffrey Kolakowski can be reached at Jeffrey.Kolakowski@bbdodetroit.com
http://courtofimpeachmentandwarcrimes.blogspot.com/2007/06/impeachment-impeach-bush-and-cheney.html
May 22, 2007
An Open Letter to John Conyers
Meet Us in Detroit
By JEFFREY KOLAKOWSKI
Dear Mr. Conyers,
On May 29, 2007-as you already know-there will be a Town Hall discussion on the possible impeachment of George W. Bush, President of the United States. In your position as chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, it is imperative that you join this discussion, and thoroughly absorb the message of the speakers.
In recent days, the Detroit City Council passed a unanimous resolution calling for impeachment of both George Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. This resolution was passed within hours of its introduction, and it passed unanimously. These are your constituents, Mr. Conyers, and they are calling on you to act. May I remind you that you represent the people that passed and supported this resolution, not Nancy Pelosi, nor the rest of the congressional Democratic leadership. You owe your constituents a chance to be heard, and not just in your praises, but in the course of action they expect you to take as their true representative.
I went to a town hall meeting, attended by you, back in February that was to be centered on impeachment. I arrived with carefully written remarks about why it is your duty to impeachment George W. Bush. To my great disappointment, the meeting had nothing to do with impeachment. Instead, it turned into a rally with speaker after speaker bemoaning the Bush administration, while praising you and the Democratic presidential contenders. That is all you wanted to talk about that day. Not impeachment, which you dismissed as impractical, but the upcoming 2008 presidential race. Never mind that the next Democratic president will inherit the awesome powers usurped by Bush for the executive. I have to assume that that doesn't matter to you as long as a Democrat holds those powers.
I fail to see how you can find solace in the prospect of a Democratic president when the last one has done so much damage to your constituency. NAFTA, and other such trade agreements cannot be good for the people of your district, as they drain manufacturing jobs. Welfare reform has certainly spread pain through your district, as well. The telecommunications act has left your constituents less informed and mislead by the mainstream media. In fact, much of the groundwork for the most egregious legislation championed by the current administration was laid by Clinton. Do you find comfort in the fact that legislation harmful to your constituents was signed into law by a Democratic president?
We cannot fix our current constitutional crisis by waiting for the next "good" president. In order for the executive branch to be checked by congress, congress needs to use all of the powers at its disposal. What precedent do we set by not moving to impeach? If this president does not deserve impeachment, no future president ever will. By failing to act, you and the rest of the Democratic leadership are giving a blank check to all future presidents to act as they will with little or no regard for the will of the people. Your inertia will condemn the American people to the fate of hoping for the next benevolent dictator.
It would seem that your most courageous acts have occurred only when you were in no danger of having to follow through with any concrete action. You held your famous "basement hearings" when the Democrats were in the minority. Also, while in the minority, your office compiled a major report outlining the constitutional offenses of the current administration. While in the minority, you were free to make the case for impeachment. Yet now-when you hold real power- you refrain from taking the trail that you have blazed. You lack the courage to follow through with your convictions, or the will of your constituents.
When you wrote the forward to your book, were you thinking of the day when you would be in a position to act on the information accumulated by your office. I find these words telling. You say "I believe it is vital that we document these allegations, learn from our mistakes, and consider laws and safeguards necessary to prevent their recurrence." Were you preemptively letting yourself off the hook here, because surely you must know that we do have laws and safeguards necessary to prevent their recurrence. Those laws are written into the United States constitution, and the safeguard is called impeachment. We do not need to write new laws to enforce a constitution that already exists. We need law makers that understand that malfeasance in government needs to be addressed above all political considerations.
I sat in another meeting that you attended early in 2006. The theme of this meeting was that everything must be done to elect Democrats to office, regardless of their views on the Iraq War. As you sat at the head of that meeting, it was made perfectly clear by the moderator that Democrats must take control of congress at all costs, because in doing so, you would be made chairman of the judiciary. It was inferred that this alone was enough to bring accountability to this administration. Of all that I have learned about the Democratic party, I found this to be hardly convincing. By your inaction thus far, you are confirming my skepticism.
I am sure that you would argue that you are holding Bush and his cohorts to account by holding the hearings you have in regard to specific unseemly acts committed by this administration. But these hearings are only meant to inflict political damage on the president. At 30% approval, or thereabouts, how much more political damage can be done? Political damage may serve the Democratic party in its bid for power in 2008, but it does nothing of real substance for the electorate. Only by criminalizing the acts of the president and vice-president can we reclaim from the executive what they have stolen from the people. This must be done so that future administrations will know there are real consequences to deceiving the American public-and ignoring the constitution.
You invited Ray McGovern to those basement hearings and were very eager to listen to his damning testimony about the conduct of this administration. I believe that if you fail to appear at this meeting, it will be because of your fear of being humiliated by your own words. McGovern, as well as the other speakers are not about to back down when you say that impeachment is impractical, or that there isn't enough time. People in your district, as well as the majority of people in this country are longing to hear the truth stated publicly and officially about the constitutional breaches of this president and administration. And they are longing to hear these truths in a manner that will bear real consequences against the perpetrators. They are longing for justice-justice that you deny them with your inaction.
Mr. Conyers, I am daring you to prove me wrong. Prove me wrong by attending the meeting on May 29, and by standing up for the people who voted you into office. Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Hillary Clinton did not vote for you as their representative, and they are not the people you owe your allegiance to. On impeachment, your constituents have spoken loud and clear. It is your duty to hear their call, and act accordingly.
Sincerely,
Jeffrey Kolakowski
Jeffrey Kolakowski can be reached at Jeffrey.Kolakowski@bbdodetroit.com
http://courtofimpeachmentandwarcrimes.blogspot.com/2007/06/impeachment-impeach-bush-and-cheney.html
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