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Deck Chairs on the Ship of State
Alan Bock - Antiwar.com
Nobody in Congress or the bureaucracy really wants to find out why the government failed so massively in any detail, because a full understanding would implicate too many people � often enough including those charged with trying to fix things. So they move the deck chairs around, congratulate themselves, feed stories to the lapdog press, and hope no small child points out the emperor�s lack of raiment. If this were simply reshuffling, Americans might not have cause for sustained outrage, even though it assures steady growth in the budgets of all these agencies � new departments generally have a honeymoon of fairly lengthy duration before they face GAO reports that are ignored by Congress. Unfortunately, the changes involved in the Homeland Security legislation are not all neutral. Somehow they managed (surprise!) to slip in provisions that increase the power of government at the expense of the liberty of the citizens, as Jefferson would have expected. The legislation also concentrates more power in the hands of the executive branch. Proponents argue this is needed to provide a swift response to terrorist threats. But without trimming and paring some of the agencies, they are likely to be at least as ineffective as before and grow more ineffective. And the more power is concentrated the less accountable it is likely to be. The legislation also further blurs the distinction between the military and civilian law enforcement. The administration wants to be able to use the military in such endeavors from time to time � as if it hadn�t already seriously overcommitted the military overseas � so it included some exceptions to the Posse Comitatus Act, which drew a line between military and civilian some 125 years ago. This is incredibly dangerous and wrongheaded. It also will provide for anyone identified as a potential terrorist, or a potential associate of a potential terrorist, to be subject to surveillance, interrogation and detention � even U.S. citizens � without access to a lawyer or family members, or even any required acknowledgment that a person is being held. This kind of secret police stuff sounds like something out of Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia, or North Korea. But it will be the law of the land in the land of the "free."

***You would have thought that after the USA PATRIOT Act passed without our representatives bothering to read the legislation, they would have taken the time to read and discuss the implications of the language of this massive document. I think it's time we started requiring "Stupidity tests" for our representatives before they are allowed to run for office.***** But that's just this old curmudgeon's opinion.********

posted by A Curmudgeon 1:31 PM