Most Americans don't understand what is at stake

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.suntimes.com/news/greeley/627505,CST-EDT-greel31.article

Mukasey would enable power grab

October 31, 2007
BY ANDREW GREELEY

Michael Mukasey, the president's nominee for attorney general, is a very dangerous man. His predecessor, Alberto Gonzales, was an incompetent buffoon, a hack from Texas who launched the campaign to turn the country into a military dictatorship in his "secret" memos ridiculing the Geneva Conventions.

Mukasey is a charming, intelligent man who talks and acts like a wise lawyer on television. However, he believes the president can ignore statutes passed by Congress by virtue of his power as commander in chief. The separation of powers, the essence of American democracy, is thereby abolished, and the president becomes a dictator who can do anything he deems necessary to defend the country. There is no review either of his decisions or his judgments about the powers of the commander in chief or the specific threat to the country. The president in theory is as absolute in his power as Stalin was in Russia. No one reviews him, no one rules on him, no one questions his decisions. The next step will be FBI men in jackboots appearing at the doors of presidential critics in the middle of the night.

Such is the situation in this country today, at least in White House theory. This is the situation the president and Mukasey want to make permanent. As long as the "global war on terror" continues -- and that will be forever in Republican administrations -- the United States will in theory be a military dictatorship like Hugo Chavez's regime in Venezuela or Fidel Castro's in Cuba. The current president may not go as far as Stalin or Castro or Chavez do, but in principle, if we are to believe Mukasey, he and his successors could do anything they want.

The framers of the Constitution did not intend to give the president unlimited powers in time of war. They gave Congress the duty to provide for the common defense. The commander in chief leads the military, he does not abrogate laws he doesn't like. He does not become a temporary dictator in time of emergency. Quite the contrary, according to the new book The Summer of 1787 by Washington lawyer David O. Stewart. The last thing the framers wanted was a dictator. The strict constructionists on the court today doubtless know that. But just as they forgot their principles of strict construction to elect Bush in the first place (stretching the principle of "equal protection under the law" far beyond its meaning), they would today, given the chance, violate "strict construction" to bestow on the president all the power he wants, even if in effect that means the repeal of the Constitution.

Most Americans don't understand what is at stake. They don't grasp that, with a lot of help from Osama bin Laden, Mr. Bush is claiming the right to establish a military dictatorship. He may not be the best president ever, people will say, but he is not scheming for absolute power. He wouldn't abrogate freedom of speech or of the press or the right to due process of the law or habeas corpus. He doesn't look like a Maximum Leader or a Caudillo or a Fuhrer. That certainly is true. But there is no evidence that he accepts any limitation on his wartime powers.

[annabanana]

1. Mukasey is step #2. .

This was step #1:

[Ezlivin]

2. As long as they can go shopping and talk endlessly on their cell phones

Americans are lost. They have become consumers, not citizens.

The only thing that will change the direction of this county is another revolution. And that won't happen because the television still works and look what's on tonight!

[0007]

5. Exhibiting thongs and camel toes are in as much as doing the

text messaging.

[B3Nut]

3. K&R

And this in a national newspaper, no less. Just....damn!

What can we realistically call Mr. Bush's actions but treason? This is nothing less than the attempted overthrow of the U.S. Government! Using the government to overthrow the government...drowning the legitimate government in the bathtub (hi Grover, you loathsome cockroach!) to make way for their hideous monster of their own depraved imaginings. This is, IMHO, America's darkest hour and one from which I am afraid she will never recover.

Todd in Cheesecurdistan

[tom_paine]

4. Most Americans are mentally equivalent to the 1937 Germans.

I have spent seven long years Paul Revere-ing my head off and confriming and reconfirming my findings dozens, no hundreds of times.

(and no, being mentally similar to 1937 Gerrmans does NOT mean simply disagreeing with me, though I am sure there are some who would like to chime right in with that boring ad hominem Straw Man...all this a preemptive strike)

Lack of historical knowledge.

Lack of ability to be skeptical about Bushie Propaganda because one time, long ago, the American MSM was relatively trustworthy and some may have said relatively outstanding compared to what was before DubyaDubyaTwo and what came after 1980 or so.

Lack of leisure time to sit and think about things. (our dwindling supply of this is now used primarily on nonsense - not that I am looking to outlaw fun or frivolity, hell, that's what makes life worth living in some ways - and Celebrity News)

Lack fo DESIRE to sit and think about things. Thinking is boring. Thinking is dull. Thinking can lead to unplesant feelings. This is why the punditocracy came along and carved out our rational minds without our even noticing. It was so much EASIER just to watch and let others think for us, pouring their opinions into our skulls without filtering of any kind.

Here is what you just saw. Now, don't think because we are goin to tell you what to think in 3...2...1...NOW!

Eevn if historical ignorance, apathy, overwork, and an aversion to think about boring, depressing issues, IS the culprit, can the people who invited and WELCOMED it be blameless?

I think not.

[mmonk]

6. Indeed.

They are clueless on the issue.

[Flatline]

7. That's what scares me the most................

Most Americans don't understand what is at stake. They don't grasp that, with a lot of help from Osama bin Laden, Mr. Bush is claiming the right to establish a military dictatorship.



So true alot of people I come in contact with are like ...well that's politics I don't get into politics I just go to work, pay my bills, live my life and keep tp myself as long as I keep doing that I have nothing to worry about.....


HELLO!!!!!!!! WAKE UP PEEPS!!!!!!!!!!! :grr: :grr:

[sicksicksick_N_tired]

8. I wonder who Bush will pass the military tyranny torch to,...

Although I tried, I can no longer deny the next election is rigged to cause an outcome. I wonder who will carry the torch into the New Dictatorial American Century.