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American Liberty Teetering on Edge of Abyss
By Paul Craig Roberts
28/01/08 "ICH"
-- - -“Your papers please” has long been a phrase associated
with Hitler’s Gestapo. People without the Third Reich’s stamp of
approval were hauled off to Nazi Germany’s version of
Halliburton detention centers.
Today Americans are on the verge of being asked for their
papers, although probably without the “please.”
Thanks to a government that has turned its back on the US
Constitution, Americans now have an unaccountable Department of
Homeland Security that is already asserting tyrannical powers
over US citizens and state governments. Headed by the neocon
fanatic Michael Chertoff, the Orwellian-sounding Department of
Homeland Security has mandated a national identity card for
Americans, without which Americans may not enter airports or
courthouses.
There is no more need for this card than there is for a
Department of Homeland Security. Neither are compatible with a
free society.
However, Bush, the neocons, Republicans and Democrats do not
want America to any longer be a free society, and they are
taking freedom away from us just as they took away the
independence of the media.
Free and informed people get in the way of power-mad zealots
with agendas.
It is the agendas that are supreme, not the American people, who
have less and less say about less and less.
George W. Bush, an elected president, has behaved like a
dictator since September 11, 2001. If “our” representatives in
Congress care, they haven’t done anything about it. Bush has
pretty much cut Congress out of the action.
In truth, Congress gave up its law making powers to the
executive branch during the New Deal. For three-quarters of a
century, the bills passed by Congress have been authorizations
for executive branch agencies to make laws in the form of
regulations. The executive branch has come to the realization
that it doesn’t really need Congress. President Bush appends his
own “signing statements” to the authorizations from Congress in
which the President says what the legislation means. So what is
the point of Congress?
As for laws already on the books, the US Department of Justice
(sic) has ruled that the President doesn’t have to abide by US
statutes, such as FISA or the law forbidding torture. Neither
does the President have to abide by the Geneva Conventions.
Other obstacles are removed by edicts known as presidential
directives or executive orders. There are more and more of these
edicts, and they accumulate more and more power and less and
less accountability in the executive.
The disdain in which the executive branch holds the “separate
and equal” legislative branch is everywhere apparent. For
example, President Bush is concluding a long-term security
agreement with the puppet government he has set up in Iraq.
Prior to September 11, 2001, when the President became The
Decider, a defense pact was a treaty requiring the approval of
Congress.
All that is now behind us. General Douglas Lute, President
Bush’s national security adviser for Iraq says that the White
House will not be submitting the deal to Congress for approval.
Lute says Bush will not be seeking any “formal inputs from the
Congress.”
“There is no question that this is unprecedented,” said Yale Law
School Professor O. Hathaway.
Bush can do whatever he wants, because Congress has taken its
only remaining power--impeachment--off the table.
The Democratic Party leadership thinks that the only problem is
Bush, who will be gone in one year. Besides, the Israel Lobby
doesn’t want Israel’s champion impeached, and neither do the
corporate owners of the US media.
The Democrats are not adverse to inheriting the powers in Bush’s
precedents. The Democrats, of course, will use the elevated
powers for good rather than for evil.
Instead of having a bad dictator, we’ll have a good one.
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in
the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall
Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of
National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good
Intentions. He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com
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