Wow.

posted by The Vidiot @ 5:08 PM Permalink

Update: Just so you're not stuck reading my pathetic spin on this story below, Josh Marshall has done a decent job of summing it all up.

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Just read the latest Executive Order. I’m no legal genius. Honestly. So don’t take my word as gold. But there a few key phrases that just, well, rub me the wrong way. Like, for instance, the Order defines the threat to national security as:

…acts of violence threatening the peace and stability of Iraq…

OK. Acts of violence. I can wrap my head around that. But then, the same sentence goes and says:

…and undermining efforts to promote economic reconstruction and political reform in Iraq and to provide humanitarian assistance to the Iraqi people…

You have to really read it. If you do, it’s the acts of violence that cause the undermining. Not undermining in and of itself. But when I first read it, I thought "Undermining?? Define undermining. Undermining as in speaking out against the war? Undermining as encouraging your representative to pull out troops out of Iraq NOW? Or how about a Congress that votes to withdraw troops against the president’s wishes? Will all those who voted “yea” fall under this “undermining” thang?" So, if I had left it at that, that’s where the conservatives would’ve said that the left leaning blogosphere just goes crazy and can’t think.

But I can and I didn't. Fine.

But THEN, I read further down and the Order says:

to have committed, or to pose a significant risk of committing, an act or acts of violence…

Significant risk? What might a "significant risk" be? Who decides of the risk is significant?

And then the kicker is here:

…because of the ability to transfer funds or other assets instantaneously, prior notice to such persons of measures to be taken pursuant to this order would render these measures ineffectual. I therefore determine that for these measures to be effective in addressing the national emergency declared in Executive Order 13303 and expanded in Executive Order 13315, there need be no prior notice of a listing or determination made pursuant to section 1(a) of this order.

Which means they can do it unilaterally with no warning and it’s only the president and The Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense, who makes the decision of what a "significant risk" might be. Throw in a dash of "no habeas corpus" and you have yourself a fine tasting gulag.

More hay is being made of this than probably should, or maybe not enough hay. Like I said, I'm no legal eagle. But I can see that this Order rests on a mighty slippery slope and this government needs to be put in check and fast.

Click your heels and say "there's nothing like tar and feathers, there's nothing like tar and feathers."

Labels: executive orders, police state