05.23.07
Still Not King, but maybe soon…
Any of y’all read National Security Presidential Directive/NSPD 51 or Homeland Security Presidential Directive/HSPD-20? Came out from the White House in May?
No?
Can’t say I blame you, it’s a pile of some of the most deliberately obfuscatory governmental gobbledygook I’ve seen in a long time, and I’m a person who reads federal “abstinence education” policy for laughs.
Even if you haven’t read it, though, you should know what it says. Because it says, in far more words, that if something happens that the President considers sufficiently catastrophic — let’s say a big earthquake, or another Katrina-esque storm, or even an actual attack on a domestic target (launched by whomever… no reason we have to look outside our own borders for terrorists, natch, says the woman who was living in the greater Baltimore/DC area during the period of the Beltway Sniper shootings…) — the President may arrogate unto himself sole responsibility for the entire Federal government.
Not just his usual branch of it. The whole shebang. Supreme Court. State Department. Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines. Coast Guard. Post Office. IRS. FEMA. The FAA. FDA. EPA. CDC/NIH. Even the Capitol Hill cafeterias. All Your Freedom Fries Are Belong To Us.
Additionally, in such an event, the President becomes the agent responsible “for ensuring constitutional government.”
I won’t speculate on whether or not the current administration has the integrity necessary to refrain from creating a suitable incident. After all, the nature of such an event is so deliberately undefined that they’d hardly have to. I mean, really, Gay Pride marches could just about constitute a terrorist crisis by the terms of this legislation.
(You, over there? Please pass this box of tissue back to the sobbing Constitutional Law professor in the back row. It is a nasty shock.)
A quick and dirty rundown of the newly-signed law can be found here: http://progressive.org/mag_wx051807
The text of the directive itself can be read here: http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/05/20070509-12.html
Do you wonder why none of the news media have been covering this story? I sure the hell do. I think I’m going to find some time today or tomorrow to write and call my local newspapers and my local TV news, and to drop a line to CNN, ABC, NBC, and CBS news, as well as the BBC and CBC.
Because Bush may not be King just yet. But it wouldn’t take much, now, would it?