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Friday, October 06, 2006

Generalissimo El Busho
Posted by Jill | 7:09 AM
Congratulations, America! You are now officially living in the dictatorship that George W. Bush repeatedly told us he wants.

Consistent with the Bush Doctrine of Truthiness, El Generalissimo said yesterday, in yet another one of his over 700 signing statements that are designed to inform the country that he has no intention of obeying any laws, that he can edit any reports issued by the Department of Homeland Security about whether it is obeying privacy laws. In other words, he reserves the right to doctor any report which indicates that the Bush Administration is overstepping its bounds so that what you see is an Administration in compliance -- while it's busy "disappearing" people:

In the law Bush signed Wednesday, Congress stated no one but the privacy officer could alter, delay or prohibit the mandatory annual report on Homeland Security department activities that affect privacy, including complaints.

But Bush, in a signing statement attached to the agency's 2007 spending bill, said he will interpret that section "in a manner consistent with the President's constitutional authority to supervise the unitary executive branch."

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said it's appropriate for the administration to know what reports go to Congress and to review them beforehand.

"There can be a discussion on whether to accept a change or a nuance," she said. "It could be any number of things."

The American Bar Association and members of Congress have said Bush uses signing statements excessively as a way to expand his power.

The Senate held hearings on the issue in June. At the time, 110 statements challenged about 750 statutes passed by Congress, according to numbers combined from the White House and the Senate committee. They include documents revising or disregarding parts of legislation to ban torture of detainees and to renew the Patriot Act.

Privacy advocate Marc Rotenberg said Bush is trying to subvert lawmakers' ability to accurately monitor activities of the executive branch of government.

"The Homeland Security Department has been setting up watch lists to determine who gets on planes, who gets government jobs, who gets employed," said Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

He said the Homeland Security Department has the most significant impact on citizens' privacy of any agency in the federal government.

Homeland Security agencies check airline passengers' names against terrorist watch lists and detain them if there's a match. They make sure transportation workers' backgrounds are investigated. They are working on several kinds of biometric ID cards that millions of people would have to carry.

The department's privacy office has put the brakes on some initiatives, such as using insecure radio-frequency identification technology, or RFID, in travel documents. It also developed privacy policies after an uproar over the disclosure that airlines turned over their passengers' personal information to the government.

The last privacy report was submitted in February 2005.


In another part of the statement, Bush re-affirmed his right to hire more unqualified cronies to Homeland Security positions:

Bush's signing statement Wednesday challenges several other provisions in the Homeland Security spending bill.

Bush, for example, said he'd disregard a requirement that the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency must have at least five years experience and "demonstrated ability in and knowledge of emergency management and homeland security."

His rationale was that it "rules out a large portion of those persons best qualified by experience and knowledge to fill the office."


Now how does requiring demonstrated ability in emergency management rule out a large portion of those persons best qualified by experience and knowledge? It doesn't, unless by "experience and knowledge" you mean "my friends and campaign contributors."

How can anyone continue to believe that this man is a patriotic American, while he's shredding the Constitution? Why does no one outside of readers of blogs seems to give a shit? Are we really still that frightened? We ought to be more frightened of our government at this point, because it is the Bush Administration that hates our freedoms.

Today the Bush Administration demands the right to eviscerate the Constitution in an effort to apprehend suspected Al Qaeda terrorists. But tomorrow it's dissenters. And I don't mean in fifty years, I mean before two years are out. Because arresting dissenters has already started:

A Colorado man who was arrested in June on harassment charges after he approached Vice President Dick Cheney to denounce the war in Iraq filed a federal lawsuit on Tuesday accusing a Secret Service agent of civil rights violations.

In his suit, filed in Federal District Court in Denver, the man, Steven Howards, an environmental consultant who lives in Golden, Colo., says he stepped up to the vice president to speak his mind in a public place and found himself in handcuffs — in violation, the suit says, of the Constitution’s language about free speech and illegal search and seizure.

[snip]

Mr. Howards, 54, said at a news conference here that he was taking his 8-year-old son to a piano lesson on June 16 at the Beaver Creek Resort about two hours west of Denver when he saw Mr. Cheney at an outdoor mall. Mr. Howards said he approached within two feet of Mr. Cheney and said in a calm voice, “I think your policies in Iraq are reprehensible,” or as the lawsuit itself describes the encounter, “words to that effect.”

Mr. Howards said he then went on his way. About 10 minutes later, he said, he was walking back through the area when Agent Reichle handcuffed him and said he would be charged with assaulting the vice president. Local police officers, acting on information from the Secret Service, according to the suit, ultimately filed misdemeanor harassment charges that could have resulted in up to a year in jail.


All of this brings us back to the Diogenes of the Death of America, Keith Olbermann, who delivered another shiv to the foul, pus-filled boil that is George W. Bush last night. No video up at YouTube yet, but Crooks and Liars has it.

The one good thing about our inevitable future in Generalissimo El Busho's concentration camps is that people like Keith Olbermann will be there with us.
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