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the Constitution could be signs of panic. What they've done, and what they've claimed for executive power, is mind-boggling, and without precedent in its breadth. It started with torture...
--the president can overturn the Geneva Conventions and US law by creating his own definition of prisoners of war ("enemy combatants") in order to hold them apart from any legal requirements regarding their treatment
--the president can hold this new category of persons--"enemy combatants"--indefinitely without charge, at disclosed or undisclosed locations, can deny them legal recourse (so they asserted), can deny them any contact with their families or the outside world, can refuse to disclose even their names, and can do whatever he damned pleases with them, including torture them to death
--the president can spy on everybody in the United States, including reporters, politicians, citizen dissenters, members of Congress, and completely uninvolved persons and businesses, in violation of numerous laws, and with no oversight whatsoever
--the president can write disclaimers on bills passed by Congress, when he "signs" them, whereby he decides which laws apply to him and his junta, and which do not--a simply incredible assertion that, in essence, dismantles the Constitution
--the president can place an "Iron Curtain" of secrecy over all the doings of his junta, denying Congress and the American people essential information about budgets and contracts, about spying, about the identities and fates of prisoners, and about literally ANYTHING the president does not want the people or its representatives to know
--the president can strongarm members of Congress for "security" reasons, and can raid Congressional offices on mere suspicion and allegation of a crime, against explicit language in the Constitution forbidding such actions, even with regard to members of Congress who have been CONVICTED of a crime--the president CANNOT touch them, even if his courts convict them of something (--because the king's courts in "old Europe" did just that, used the courts and police powers against legislators to suppress lawful dissent by the peoples' representatives)
--the president can use massive deception to force Congress to give him power to invade a specific country that the president alleges is a threat, and then can broaden that power dramatically to include invading that country without cause, slaughtering tens of thousands of innocent people, torturing many more, plotting the invasion of other countries, creating a $10 TRILLION deficit with much of his budget hidden and unaccountable, and overturning the Bill of Rights at home on the grounds of "national security"
--the president and his regime can commit treason by outing and endangering not just one US covert agent, but an entire US counter-proliferation network, putting all of its covert agents and contacts at risk of death; can permit the shredding of documents pertaining to his and others' guilt, and can direct his lieutenants to stonewall any investigation.
--the president can inflict political and religious tests on anyone in government, including military and intelligence professionals, government scientists, and civil servants of every kind, and can thus undermine and destroy established agencies created by Congress for the public good, if he so wishes
--the president can use public funds to "establish religion."
And that's just for starters.
It's beyond scary. It IS a junta. There is no other word for it. We, the People, have been overthrown.
But this is a great big, complicated and very diverse country. That is one our strengths. And, in my opinion, it cannot easily be Nazified. They've had five and half years of unfettered power--in government and in the corporate news monopolies--and they have failed to convince the vast majority of the American people to "sieg heil." In fact, some 70% of the people are "thumbs down" on this regime. So these junta-ists are sitting on a very thin reed of power--getting thinner every minute--that could collapse at any time. They further have the Fitzgerald investigation hanging over their heads--which I think has had far more impact behind the scenes than anyone realizes. These latest assaults on the Constitution--particularly the assertion of the power of illegal and pervasive spying, the power to stop members of Congress from entering Congress (McKinney), the power to invade Congressional offices (Jefferson), and now the power to interrogate members of Congress regarding illegal acts of the regime-- smell like panic to me. They are facing a huge rebellion of the American people in the fall--even WITH their Diebold and ES&S election theft machinery now installed (a 5% to 10% "thumb on the scales" for Bushites and warmongers)--and want to put the precedents in place NOW for outright unconstitutional curtailment of Congress with police actions.
I think they sense that they cannot stop the landslide of disapproval that is coming. They are desperately grasping at other means to prevent investigations and overrides of their asserted illegal powers. Desperate being the key word.
What WE have to do is to engender massive voter turnout, to elect representatives who cannot be intimidated, and who cannot be blackmailed.
I wish we had the Democratic Party on our side as to beating the machines. Unfortunately, for the most part, we do not. Whether out of corruption or fear, they are "head in the sand" about Bushite corporate control of the voting machines (with 'TRADE SECRET', PROPRIETARY programming code, and virtually no audit/recount controls--so authored by Tom Delay and Bob Ney!). (--and Christopher Dodd!)
We did it in 2004. We did massive turnout, without a whole lot of help from the Democratic Party. It was grass roots groups who did it (a blowout success for the Dems in new voter registration in 2004, nearly 60/40*). We need to do that AGAIN. And we very clearly need to hang in there for the long term, and work at the state/local level to get rid of these election theft machines and restore election transparency. If we accomplish nothing else but making the case against the machines, we will win back our democracy over time. The junta may teeter and fall of its own hubris and corruption, in the meantime. We need to work on a plan to never let it happen again--starting with VERIFIABLE elections.
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*(How did we "lose"? Prove it to me. SHOW ME THE BALLOTS!)
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