Ermächtigungsgesetz

By Michael J. Smith on Tuesday January 3, 2012 12:51 AM

Oh, I know, I know; they haven't fired up the ovens yet, so this can't be Fascism. Still, certain analogies are too tempting to resist.

I'm glad to see that Comrade Owen -- usually so dismissive of the whole civil-liberties question -- has seen fit to comment on Obie's weaselly signing statement for the Police State Enhancement Act. The whole statement is well worth reading. It's truly a marvel, nay, a miracle, of legal pettifoggery: certainly the finest thing that the University of Chicago's law school has ever directly or indirectly produced. If your head isn't spinning halfway through, then you have a great future ahead of you in the mockingly-named "Justice Department".

One notes that Obie's signing statement omits any mention of the section he is said to have pushed for, namely 1031, which is precisely the section that has us all worried. It

defines the entirety of the United States as a “battlefield,” allows American citizens to be snatched from the streets, carted off to a foreign detention camp and held indefinitely without trial. The bill states that “any person who has committed a belligerent act” faces indefinite detention, but no trial or evidence has to be presented, the White House merely needs to make the accusation.
Y'know, it's funny. I almost want it to happen. Compared to dealing with landlords and insurance companies and medical 'providers', living rent-free at Guantanamo Bay has its appeal.

Comments (4)

op:

" I almost want it to happen"

i don't
for one thing
i would not hold up well under torture

they'd have me
at bread and water

as my hero fred allen once claimed of jack benny

for owen
roughing it
is going two days without manicotti

It's something the power elites will keep in their back pocket in case the populace gets too uppity. Then some folks will start getting disappeared. One day you're working with some fellow activists to organize protests, work stoppages or whatever and the next you begin to notice that a few of them are just gone. They don't answer the phone, respond to texts, they're not at their home any more, their family has no idea what happened to them... they're just gone.

It's happened a lot in other places and come the right circumstances it'll be coming to a location near you.

Boink:

"It's happened a lot in other places and come the right circumstances it'll be coming to a location near you."

I made that point to a pal back in the 1980's when we had been talking about "low intensity warfare" in Central America. (BTW whatever happened to LIW?) He said it could never happen. If they tried it here, Teddy Kennedy would be all over CBS raising hell!

Etc.

Those were the days, eh?

Peter Ward:

It occurs to me our much lauded freedoms are really negative. Middle class white folk haven't hitherto been particularly restless therefore been granted litany of freedoms that never get used and were probably never intended to be (in any meaningful way); but now that a few young'ns are getting uppity and perhaps taking their imagined rights* a little too seriously its time to be dust off the jackboats.

*Obviously I think rights is a picayune
a concept; but the folks the new laws are aimed haven't had this revelation.

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