Friday, June 15, 2007

Don't We Have a Constitution, Not a King?

"Bush has issued a directive that would place all governmental powers in his hands in the case of a catastrophic emergency" according to Marjorie Cohn of AlterNet. "If a terrorist attack happens before the 2008 election, could Bush and Cheney use this to avoid relinquishing power to a successor administration?

"Bush quietly issued an unconstitutional bombshell that went virtually unnoticed by the corporate media.

"The National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive, signed on May 9, 2007, would place all governmental power in the hands of the President and effectively abolish the checks and balances in the Constitution." Cohn goes on.

In case of a "catastrophic emergency" the new directive reads, "The President shall lead the activities of the Federal Government for ensuring constitutional government" continuing, the President proposes that the three co-equal branches of government would 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." The Vice President would help implement these plans.

Dictionary.com says comity means, "mutual courtesy; civility." In other words, the Congress and the Courts would be treated with courtesy but would have no power. I don't know about you but I don't trust George W. Bush, or any president, with so much power and surely even the poor souls who voted for him would have to concede that we fought a revolution in 1776 to get rid of King George and don't need another one.

Bet you didn't even know our president had issued such a directive back on May 9th. Probably because the MSM was too busy worrying who Anna Nicole's 'baby daddy' is, or whether Paris Hilton would serve out her 45 day term, or Harry Reid had called Peter Pace incompetent (although he is).

Read the full story (link under title above) and post your thoughts as to what you plan to do about this signing statement?

a) ignore it and hope for the best
b) demand that Congress confront him and take action (I'm not sure what)
c) pack up and move to Canada

A nod to David Pollak for ferreting out this story.

1 comment:

  1. Anonymous8:44 PM

    His directives do not change the Constitution. This worthless idiot will be the authority who is primarily responsible for preventing such an attack. Nobody pays attention to him now and there would be no reason to change after an attack. They have already picked a shadow government unknown to the public--Al Haig, anyone ?

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