VENGEANCE IS MINE, SAITH THE LORD

Column No.  95 By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH - February 2, 2006

As Judge Gheen pointed out in TPJ of  January 22, 2006, on Jan. 20 (“Rove Lays Out Road Map for Republicans in Fall Elections,” Adam Nagourney, The New York Times, 1/21/06) “Karl Rove. . . gave nervous Republicans here a preview on Friday of the party's strategy to maintain its dominance in the fall elections, offering a searing attack on Democrats for their positions on terrorism, the administration's eavesdropping program and President Bush's effort to shape the federal judiciary. . . .In [his] speech. . . . Mr. Rove criticized Democrats for their opposition to tax cuts and for what he called "mean-spirited" attacks on Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr., Mr. Bush's Supreme Court nominee. And he left little doubt that in 2006 - as in both nationwide elections since the Sept. 11 attacks - he was intent on making national security the pre-eminent issue. .... [He] criticized Democrats for what he described as their ‘cut and run’ policy on Iraq, for blocking a renewal of the antiterrorism law known as the USA Patriot Act and for challenging the legality of the administration's use of wiretaps without warrants. . . ‘The United States faces a ruthless enemy,’ Mr. Rove said, ‘and we need a commander in chief and a Congress who understand the nature of the threat and the gravity of the moment America finds itself in. President Bush and the Republican Party do. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for many Democrats. Let me be as clear as I can be. President Bush believes if Al Qaeda is calling somebody in America, it is in our national security interest to know who they're calling and why,’ he said, referring to the wiretapping program. ‘Some important Democrats clearly disagree.’ "

And so, Uncle Karl, mixing truth and fiction as he so expertly has done over the years, has set forth the Republican agenda for the fall elections, just as he set it for the previous three national elections in which he has been directly involved (losing two in the true vote counts of course, but winning on paper where it counts for taking control of the government nevertheless).  One thing you can say for modern Republicans (whether they are “liberals” [sic] or not) is that they pretty much follow the Rovian agenda.  Another is that Rove, who studied at the feet of Lee “Willie Horton” Atwater, knows that whoever controls the agenda wins the election.

As long ago as 1992 in my book The New Americanism: How the Democratic Party Can Win the Presidency I have felt that this is indeed one very important political lesson that the Democrats could profitably learn from the Republicans.  They have yet to do so, as Sen. Kerry so disastrously demonstrated in 2004.  Feeling that my continuing to say that would continue to have as much impact (none) as doing so has had to date, I decided to consult a Higher Authority.  After all, if doing so is good enough for Pat Robertson, Mayor Nagin, and George Bush (see my TPJ column “The Real Meaning of the ‘Faith-Based Presidency’, Part II”), it is good enough for me, I reasoned.  (As to which “one true God” any of us is communicating with, mine, of course, is Him [or Her, as the case may be], not any of theirs.)  And so I gave God a ring.

He (and there was a male voice at the other of the line when I called) was not in a particularly good mood. “What is going on down there?” I was asked.  “Things are really getting out of hand. I am truly wroth.  In fact, to quote myself ‘Vengeance is mine.’ In case you haven’t heard,” the voice intoned, “that is one of the most famous sayings from the Bible, you know, from Hebrews 10:30. I will repeat the quote for you, for it has such a nice ring to it: ‘Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.’ You have got this idiot President running around, taking my name in vain, wreaking all kinds of havoc.  And the political opposition (for lack of a better term) doesn’t seem to have a clue about how to deal with him and his cronies.  They better shape up soon or who knows what I will do.  Actually, I do know what I will do, and I also know what they had better do.  To begin with, they had better get ahold of the agenda, and they can use my name in so doing if they wish to.”

I gave this conversation and what followed in it a good deal of thought.  In the balance of my column today I share with you my summary of what God told me.

Of the many dismayed observers of the havoc being wreaked by the Georgites, the highest ranked is probably God. And He/She has taken a very dim view of it. For God has taken special pride in the creation, by a remarkable group of products of one of His/Her greatest achievements, the Enlightenment, of the US Constitution. It was the Enlightenment which ensconced the kind of mental process, the Use of Reason, which God had intended to eventually be achieved by humanity. But now God is mightily displeased. For in the United States both the use of Reason, eventually produced by the intellect that God worked so mightily to provide for in His creation, and the Constitution, are under serious attack.

As we know, God does not intervene directly in human affairs, but, from time to time, rather through various personages. God is wrath about what has happened in the nation that has been governed by that brilliant product of the highest level of thinking that his highest creation has yet achieved, but is about to be deprived of it. God is wrath about the threatened abandonment of the Rule of Law, the Rule that God values so highly that it is the centerpiece of His/Her Covenant with the Israelites. And God is wrath about the current political currents in the United States which so go against the values which are at the center of His/Her thinking about humans, the first one being that God loves all of his/her children.

God is wrath that a leading political party in the United States has put at the center of its program hatred of one particularly type of human based on sexuality.

God is wrath that a leading political party in the United States has put at the center of its program hatred of one particularly type of human based on skin color.

God is wrath that a leading political party in the United States has put at the center of its program hatred of women of child-bearing age and hatred of all people who believe that life begins at a time other the moment of conception (a matter that God him/herself has never been clear upon).

God is wrath that the American people as a whole have let this particular political party in the United States gain such a position of dominance, with no real opposition from the other major political party, that both the Constitution and the Rule of Law are at risk.

God is wrath that the American people as a whole have let this particular political party in the United States gain such a position of dominance that policies concerning the whole matter of environmental balance, so necessary for the preservation of God's highest creation, the human species, and all of the other species as well, has been put at risk.

God is wrath that the American people as a whole have allowed such un-God-like people as those known as the "Christian Right," people who preach hate and bigotry, violence and the use of force on the people's thinking, to gain such an unprecedented position of power in the country.

God is wrath that the American people as a whole do not seem to be close to realizing the reality of the above reality.

And so, God is about to wreak vengeance upon the United States. For God feels that the only way now to wake up the people of the United States and their political representatives who should know better, before it is too late, is to visit upon this country a modern version of the Seven Plagues. And this time, no one will receive a bye. Yes, through George Bush, and his minions known as the Georgites, the following will occur, that is unless the people, and especially their political leadership who should know better, wake up in time.

The First Plague: Out-and-out fascism.

The Second Plague: The next Great Depression.

The Third Plague: At the same time, spiraling inflation.

The Fourth Plague: The continued degradation of those major urban centers which, like New Orleans before the flood, were centers of Democratic political strength, but which through lack of investment were sinking ever further in the mire.

The Fifth Plague: The occurrence of shortages of fuel and power, of ever-increasing severity, on a regular basis.

The Sixth Plague: The occurrence on a regular basis of ever-worsening environmental catastrophes such as the Great New Orleans Flood of 2005.

The Seventh Plague: If nothing is done while there is still time, and God does say that there is, the occurrence of the Second Civil War, one that will make the first one look like a school picnic (to not coin a phrase).

Now God moves in mysterious ways and thus will not reveal His/Her timetable for all of this. But God does tell us to mark His/Her word. If nothing is done soon, the Plagues will arrive. The final outcome of their occurrence, were they to occur, not even God knows.

___________

Authors’ Note:  This column is based in part on a “Short Shot” of mine that appeared on Monday, September 12, 2005 on The Moving Planet Blog (UK) http://planetmove.blogspot.com.

GEORGE BUSH AND THE DOCTRINE OF ORIGINAL INTENT

Column No. 94 By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH -  January 26, 2006

The Alito nomination is before the Senate.  It is likely that he will be confirmed, but most interesting will be finding out whether the Senate Democrats have enough of an awareness of what is really going on in this country under Georgite rule to mount a filibuster attempt, even if were to fail.  Last week I wrote about “Original Intent” according to Scalia.  I pointed out that he does have a peculiar interpretation of the term.  I also wrote about something of what the plain language of the Constitution tells us in reality about the original intent of the founders.  That understanding is rather different from that of Scalia, and of Alito in fact.  Since George Bush has touted the Scalito twins as “Original Intentionists” I thought that it would be useful this week to look at what Bush himself means when he says “original intent.”

To help in that understanding I begin this column with, once again, my short definition of fascism:

“Fascism is a politico-economic system in which there is: total executive branch control of both the legislative and administrative powers of government; no independent judiciary; no Constitution that embodies the Rule of Law standing above the people who run the government; no inherent personal rights or liberties; a single national ideology that first demonizes and then criminalizes all political, religious, and ideological opposition to it; and total corporate determination of economic, fiscal, and regulatory policy.”   (If you would like to see my longer definitions, please refer to my columns of May 27, 2004 “On Fascism -- And The Georgites,” of Jan 27, 2005 “Comparing George W. Bush and Adolf Hitler”, and of February 10, 2005, “The Georgite Version of ‘Freedom and Democracy’.”)

George Bush claims that he is an “Original Intentionist.” He tells us that Justice Scalia, who as noted, also claims to be an Original Intentionist,  is his model Justice, and that his judicial appointments are also going to be of Original Intentionists or, to use an alternate term for the classification “Strict Constructionists.”  Scalia, of course, already has told us that Strict Construction and Original Intent mean that the Constitution is over-laid by something called “Natural Law,” handed down by “God.”  That there is no such wording remotely referring to such a matter in the Constitution itself would seem to be a mere detail of, dare I say it, interpretation, for Scalia.  In this light, it is interesting to see just what George Bush and the Georgites mean by “Original Intent” and “Strict Construction.”

For example, the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution reads:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

According to Bush the Strict Construction of this language means that the President on his own authority can conduct warrantless searches if he deems it necessary to preserve something he calls “national security.”

The Constitution (see last week’s column), using declaratory language, rests the power to declare war in the Congress.  According to Bush the strict construction of this language means that when, absent a forma Congressional declaration, he puts the US into a war in the vernacular sense of the term which he uses, that means that war has been declared in the Constitutional sense as well.

The Original Intent of the Constitutional Commander-in-Chief clause is not clear, except that it refers to the Army, the Navy, and “the militia.”  In a document that is supposed by the Right not to be open to interpretation, it is a highly interpretable article.  However, it has never been interpreted as Bush is interpreting it.  What happened to Truman when he tried to take over the nation’s steel mills in time of war to prevent a strike is instructive.  His move was disallowed by the Supreme Court, and just about every major politician thought that that was a fine decision.  Here is the famous quote from Justice Robert Jackson on that one:

His command power is not such an absolute as might be implied from that office in a militaristic system but is subject to limitations consistent with a constitutional Republic whose law and policy-making branch is a representative Congress. The purpose of lodging dual titles in one man was to insure that the civilian would control the military, not to enable the military to subordinate the presidential office. No penance would ever expiate the sin against free government of holding that a President can escape control of executive powers by law through assuming his military role.

But for the Bush version of “Strict Constructionism,” never mind. Actually, if one were to literally follow the Constitutional language, Bush would not be Commander-in-Chief of the Air Force because it is not specifically mentioned, and certainly the National Security Agency isn’t.  But according to Bush, the Original Intent of the Commander-in-Chief clause is that he can do anything he likes, on both the legislative and judicial (see Guantanamo, Padilla, Abu Ghraib, and etc.) sides, as long as he states that the nation is at war and under the threat of “terrorism.”

I have dealt frequently in this space with The Patriot Act and how it over-rides not only the Fourth, but also the Fifth (due process) and Sixth (jury trial rights in criminal cases).  I guess that the power to do such over-rides, actually first taken by the Congress before it handed it to the Executive Branch, comes under the Bush definition of “Original Intent” and “Strict Construction” as well.

“Vice-President” Cheney's original objection to the supposed torture prohibition legislation that was eventually passed by Congress was on the grounds, not that torture is a good thing to have in one’s quiver (although he may well believe that; we don’t know), but prohibiting its use by the President would interfere with Presidential power to what he wants to do “in time of war” (whether in the vernacular or the Constitutional sense).  The “Signing Statement” (which the Georgites claim allows the President to over-ride legislation he doesn’t like) deal plays right into this one.  I’ve looked at the Constitution in detail, but I can find nothing that says that legislative authority is shared between the legislative and executive branches, or any reference to “Presidential Signing Statements” at all, whether they would have legal standing or not.  Another score for the Bush meaning of “Original Intent.”

As for Scalito, Bush picked him for more than one reason (and as I have said elsewhere it is becoming quite clear that the Miers nomination was a classic bait and switch move to mobilize the Christian Right base behind Alito).  And here is a prime one (Progress Report, Jan. 3, 2006, “SUPREME COURT: Alito's Imbalancing Act”):

FOR -- UNCHECKED PRESIDENTIAL POWER: While working in the Reagan Justice Department, Alito wrote in 1984 that "the attorney general should have absolute immunity for warrantless wiretapping." Separately, Alito also helped establish a new practice of issuing presidential bill-signing statements that served to "tip the balance of power between Congress and the White House a little more in favor of the executive branch." The Palm Beach Post recently opined that Alito has shown "a desire to give government the kind of power most conservatives abhor." In arguing for presidential signing statements, Alito said, "Since the president's approval is just as important as that of the House or Senate, it seems to follow that the president's understanding of the bill should be just as important as that of Congress." And so now we know as well what Alito means by “Original Intent” and “Strict Construction.”

Finally, as my good friend Jack Dalton said recently:

“Was it not George W. Bush who stated 5 years ago, ‘…this would be much easier if this were a dictatorship, as long as I was the dictator?’  Was it not George W. Bush who was quoted recently [as] stating, ‘The Constitution is just a goddamn piece of paper?’ (Jack's Straight-Speak 1-2-06, http://jack-dalton.blogspot.com/).”

But hey, you can’t blame George.  It’s in his genes.  His Dad was quoted as saying something similar about dictatorship when he was President.  His grandfather, Prescott Bush, stopped his financial dealings with Nazi Germany in February, 1942 only when FDR threatened to prosecute him under the Trading with the Enemy Act. (Hitler had declared war on the US on December 8, 1941 --- yes, Hitler, as surprised by Pearl Harbor as we were, reluctantly declared war on us under a treaty obligation he had to Japan, President Roosevelt did not first declare war on him.)  And a maternal great-grandfather, George Herbert Walker, began financing Hitler and the German Nazi Party in 1924.  With this background, it is only natural that George W. Bush’s interpretation of the terms “Original Intent” and “Strict Constructionism” mean that the Constitution, yes indeed, does provide for a Presidential dictatorship, just as long as one George Bush or another is the dictator.

LET’S HEAR IT FOR ORIGINAL INTENT (VERSION 2)

Column No. 93 By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH - January 19, 2006

Note to the reader:  Last September 8 TPJ ran the original version of this column.  A revised version was published in Inquirer, the monthly publication of  the Long Island (NY) Secular Humanists, in the November issue (see page 5) (and is used here with their kind permission).  With the Alito hearings upon us and with the Georgite mission of Constitutional destruction now out in the open through the revelation of the extra-judicial domestic spying apparati, I thought that it would be useful and of interest to run it again in this space.

The Republican Religious Right (RRR) in the United States likes to tell us that Constitutional jurisprudence as conducted by the nation’s courts has been all wrong since the time the Supreme Court started coming around to the support of the New Deal in 1938.  This jurisprudence has, they tell us, been dominated by “activist,” “liberal” judges who just “impose their own views on the law, in violation of everything good and sound.”  What is needed in applying the Constitution to the law, policy, and policy-making, according to the RRR, is a return to what they call the “Doctrine of Original Intent.”  This Doctrine can be defined as taking the Constitution literally, as assuming that its words have a plain meaning and that they should be followed in applying it to both the law and the structure and functions of government that it describes and defines.

The RRR holds up Justice Antonin Scalia as their primary avatar of this Doctrine.  In the July and August issues of Inquirer, its’ Editor/Publisher Mr. Gerry Dantone considered Scalia’s position on the primacy of “God” and organized religion in public life and what its relationship to the law should be.  Proceeding from that foundation, it is useful to examine further how Scalia himself views the Constitution, and indeed how he applies the Doctrine of Original Intent to it.  As Mr. Dantone showed, Scalia holds that “God” and organized religion should be at the center of public life, of government, and of Constitutional interpretation.  Examining his many speeches, writings, and Supreme Court opinions on various aspects of this subject, it will come as a surprise to many observers that it is clear from his own words that in fact that Scalia himself does not follow the Doctrine of Original Intent.

In relation to the Constitution and its interpretation the most important indicator of Scalia’s non-adherence to the Doctrine is his oft-state belief in something he calls “Natural Law,” standing above the Constitution.  For Scalia (as documented in the Dantone articles referred to above) “Natural Law” means “God’s Law.”  For a further example, consider the following words of the Justice, as quoted by Sean Wilentz ("From Justice Scalia: A Chilling Vision of Religion's Authority in America," New York Times (republished in Truthout), July 8, 2003).  Wilentz wrote: “Beginning with a quote from St. Paul as his thoughts are represented in the New Testament, Scalia had this to say about the subject (2002):  ‘For there is no power but of God [St. Paul is said to have said]; the powers that be are ordained of God. . . The Lord repaid -- did justice -- through his minister, the state . . . [This was the consensus] of Christian or religious thought regarding the powers of the state… That consensus has been upset, I think, by the emergence of democracy . . .”

In practice, thus Scalia goes against his own words, for nowhere in the Constitution are any such thoughts or principles to be found, either in its plain language or in any conceivable interpretation of it. He has told us on numerous occasions, the above being but one example, that there no “inalienable rights of man,” for the Framers the basis of Constitutional Law.  According to Scalia there are only rights that are granted by God.  Since God does not often speak to us directly, in practice that means any individual rights are only those granted by God’s representatives on Earth, in accordance with what they think God’s wishes are (that is unless He or She speaks to such representatives, like Scalia or George Bush perhaps, in private).  "Natural Law," the “law(s) of God,” are thus whatever Church authority, such as Scalia’s apparent favorite, the Pope, happens to tell us they are.  In reality, this, that is “Natural Law,” standing above the Constitution, is nothing more or less than the rule of man, not law.  Again, although I may have missed it, I cannot find anything like Scalia’s jurisprudence anywhere in the Constitution. Nor, by the way, can I find the word “God.”

I happen to believe that, following its own literal meaning, the Doctrine of Original Intent is precisely what the Framers had in mind.  Contrary to Scalia, and Clarence Thomas, and the newly minted appellate Judge Janice Rogers Brown who believes that regulation of the economy is a worse institution than human slavery, I am actually a firm believer in following the plain language of the Constitution.  That text tells me indeed what the Original Intent of the Framers was, and I think that it should be followed.  Surprised?  Well, folks, if you read the Constitution clearly, it clearly says “here are some specifics, some definites,” while in other places it clearly says, by being ambiguous, “interpret me please.”  There is no evidence that the Framers were dunces, did not know how to use the English language, and thus were not being purposeful in how they used it.  As theocratic Georgite fascism comes barreling down the track, it’s all we’ve got to defend ourselves with.  Following are some examples of the application of the Doctrine.

Let’s begin with the Preamble, that almost always forgotten, ignored, suppressed part of the Constitution which tells us in plain language what the role of government is, according to the Framers:  “We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”  That’s a pretty broad, positive, set of tasks is it not?  A major characteristic is ambiguity, begging for interpretation one might say, is it not?  And if it doesn’t beg for interpretation, then precisely how one would precisely interpret it?  The Original Intent here is quite obvious: “Interpret me --- and apply me --- please.”

On the other hand we next come to Article I. In Section 1 it says: “All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.”  It doesn’t say, as the Georgites would have it, “some legislative powers are vested in the Congress, and the rest in the Executive, subject to the whim of the latter.”  Yes, the Original Intent is obvious here too.  Sections 2-7 of Article I are mainly about matters of organization, voting, and discipline for the legislative branch, and then we get to the famous Article I, Section 8.  It says, in part: “The Congress shall have power to… regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian tribes…” The term “regulate commerce” is nowhere defined.  Again ambiguous, no?  It, like the Preamble, begs for interpretation.  The RRR would have you think that the Constitution puts strict limits on how the Congress may interpret and apply that clause.  Again, I have looked hard for it, but I just cannot find any such language.  Again, the Original Intent is obvious here; “interpret me, please.”  On the other hand, the Constitution is pretty specific about one power of the Congress: “To declare war.”  That one doesn’t seem to be open to interpretation, does it?  Original intent strikes the RRR again.

Then there is Article I, Section 9, which says in part: “The privilege of the writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it.”  That seems pretty specific too.  Habeas Corpus, according to Original Intent, is to be suspended only in times of rebellion or invasion, and only the Congress may suspend.  The President, for example, cannot do it on his/her own authority, nor can Congress authorize its abolition except under those two specific circumstances, certainly nothing as vague as some “war against terror.”  The Original Intent is again pretty obvious here, is it not?

Going on to Article II, Section 2 says that “The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States.”  Again, vague.  Nowhere to be found is a definition of “Commander-in-Chief.”  It could mean “General-in-Chief,” as the Georgites would have us believe.  But it could just as easily mean that final military authority is simply to be subject to civilian rule, a logical interpretation based upon the historical experience and knowledge of English history of the Framers.  Nevertheless, interpretation is invited (although according to the Doctrine of Original Intent, since the words “Air Force” do not appear in it, the President has no authority over that branch of the armed forces).  Yes, under the Constitution Bush, in contradistinction to every previous occupant of the White House other than Lyndon Johnson who personally picked out bombing targets in Vietnam, could be what he thinks he is, General-in-Chief.

Article III, Section 1 states that the “judicial power of the United States, shall be vested in one Supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish.”  While there is a list of powers of the Supreme Court, nowhere to be found in Article III is any description of the power of Judicial Review over the actions of the other two branches of the government.  In the early 19th century, Chief Justice John Marshall and his colleagues invented the concept, using some fairly complex legal reasoning and logic to arrive at it.  They thus interpreted the Constitution, for nowhere in it is there any plain language or other evidence “original intent” to provide for judicial review. Over the course of two decades, the Marshal construction was accepted by the rest of the polity. (Jefferson was strongly opposed to the idea but even he eventually went along with it.)  But it is nowhere to be found in anything approaching explicit language in the Constitution.  Therefore, we can hardly say that granting that power to the Court was part of the Original Intent of the Framers.  If Scalia were to be consistent, he would have to advocate doing away altogether with the Supreme Court as the arbiter of the Constitutionality of acts of both the Executive and the Legislative Branches.  But I don’t think that anyone has ever accused Scalia of being consistent.  After all, consistency is just the hobgoblin of small minds, isn’t it?

Moving right along, Article V is quite specific about which body can amend the Constitution.  It is not the Executive Branch.  Article VI is quite specific that “all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land” (see former White House Counsel and now Attorney General Gonzales and the “quaint” Geneva Conventions, by a provision of the Constitution itself, part of it).  The Original Intent is clear once again.  I’m sure that if you have lasted this far you get my drift.

Turning to the Bill of Rights, the First, Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Amendments are pretty explicit about the guarantees of the rights with which they are concerned.  For example, the Fourth provides protection against unreasonable search and seizure, the Fifth guarantees the protection of due process of law, and the Sixth guarantees jury trial in criminal cases.  All happen to have been over-ridden by the Patriot Act, which Scalia has voted to uphold.  Finally, there is the Ninth Amendment: “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”  My, my, my, how vague, how broad, how interpretable.  No wonder that the authoritarian Judge Bork (you remember him), he who was, and is, supposed to be such an avatar of the Doctrine of Original Intent, described the Ninth as an “inkblot on the Constitution.”  It is such an inconvenience for the RRR.  After all, this Amendment is wide open to interpretation. For example, it could even be interpreted to mean that there is something called the Right to Privacy.

One must then come to the following conclusion.  Yes, the framers did intend that their document and its meaning be followed in our country down through history, as written.  Given the presence of ambiguous language in certain places, it is clear that part of that intention was to provide within it the means for dealing with changing times and circumstances.  Thus one must conclude that if they had been asked “do you believe in the Doctrine of Original Intent?” they would have replied pretty much in unison as follows:

“Oh yes we do.  That is why we made certain clauses as specific as we did, especially those clauses guaranteeing personal freedom and limiting governmental powers in relation to it, as well as those clauses dealing with governmental actions concerning life and death, such as war and making treaties.  That is why also we made other clauses vague and open to interpretation, especially those dealing with commerce and industry and economic affairs.  For those are areas in which government must have flexibility to deal with changes in human abilities to deal with the physical means of life.  That times and needs change too is why we created the Ninth Amendment, in reference to personal rights and liberties. Finally we were intentionally broad, very broad, with the Preamble.  There is so much good that government can do, and we want to make sure that ours focuses on it.”

And so, my friends, as the RRR takes over the Supreme Court and Bush runs roughshod over the Constitution, let’s hear it for the Doctrine of Original Intent, as it was originally intended, reading the plain language written by the Framers themselves.

A QUICK VISIT TO MEXICO

Column No. 92 By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH - January 12, 2006

At the end of 2005, my wife and I had the pleasure of visiting Mexico for nine days.  In this column I share with you some observations on the history and politics of this fascinating country, along with some travel tips for those who might be stimulated by these thoughts and other information as well, to pay Mexico a visit.  I make no pretense at being any kind of expert on Mexico.  The facts, or what I believe to be facts, are based on information gathered in a series of historical/anthropological museum visits and a bit of reading.  I think that I am stating things correctly here, but if I am not, misstatements are not made with intention and I do apologize in advance for them.

First of all, Mexico is an historic country.  There is evidence of civilization being established there going back thousands of years.  The only other area in the Western Hemisphere where, to our present knowledge, civilization arose was in the South American Andes, where the Incas created an apparently highly developed one.  They, however, did not have a written language.  The most highly developed Mexican one, the Mayan, centered in Yucatan and having at least two separate eras of civilized society, did.  However, the Spaniards who took over the country in the 16th century, Catholic Church and Royal Armed forces working side-by-side, went out of their way to destroy as much of the written legacy of the Mayans (apparently vast) as they could, by burning every Mayan book they could lay their hands on.  A few, courtesy of a few Catholic monks who realized what their superiors were doing and were horrified by it, survived, and so there is a bit of a written record still left.  But most of it is gone.  Among the Mayan achievements were an accurate calendar and the concept of zero, which their Western European conquerors had learned only from the Arabs.  It does not appear in Roman numerology.

An interesting historical conflict with the Christian world is that while Biblical literalists date the Creation of the Earth to 6004 B.C.E., the Mayans, to the best of our knowledge, dated it only to 3123 B.C.E.  I wonder how we could determine just which creation story has the correct date.

Travel tip I.  If you are flying to Mexico, making a connection in Mexico City before reaching your final destination, be careful with whom you fly.  We flew with Delta from New York City to Mexico City and then changed planes for a flight to Oaxaca.  We booked through Aero México, but we had code shares internationally with Delta and in Mexico with Mexicana Airlines.  We missed our connection in Mexico City.  We were able to get onto an AeroMexico flight several hours later but wanted to make sure that our luggage would make it also.  Neither Aero México, nor Mexicana, nor Delta, could give us any more precise information.  Fortunately, our bags got onto our flight into Oaxaca.  Others were not so fortunate.  My wife met an American couple who had flown in on Delta, made a change in Mexico City and five days later still had not got their luggage.  We heard from other travelers that this was not a totally unusual occurrence.  Next time we go to Mexico, should we have to make a change in Mexico City; we will make sure that we fly on the same, Mexican, airline from New York to wherever in Mexico.

In the history of Mexico, from the early civilizations onward, the society seems to have been made up of two primary classes: the owner-rulers and everyone else, with a few variations over time and place.  Certainly the Aztec civilization that the first Spanish explorers encountered was stratified in this way.  There was a ruling class that lived very well.  Then there were the worker/farmers who supported them and who, for example, were not allowed, on pain of death, to acquire any marginal goods or property beyond what they needed to be productive in their work.  Certain skilled tradesmen and artisans drawn from this serving class were permitted certain privileges, as were highly skilled warriors.  Beneath them all was a slave class, made up of people captured in the perpetual wars with the Aztecs’ neighbors that seemed to characterize the period.  The Aztecs produced some marvelous artwork and some magnificent buildings (most of which were destroyed by the Spanish, as they destroyed the Mayans’ books).  They also produced a remarkably violent domestic culture, with human sacrifice, sometime in very large numbers, apparently being a common occurrence.  Supposedly done to “appease the Gods,” it most likely also served a very useful purpose for the rulers for keeping the working class, the slaves, and any captured enemies in their respective places.

Travel tip II.  Mexico City is one of the largest in the world.  Its present population is around 23 million.  Its altitude is 7000 ft. and it is covered by a permanent layer of smog.  Nevertheless, it is a city that works, at least for the Mexicans who have enough to live on and for tourists (for whom Mexico, unless you stay in a high-priced hotel, is a bargain).  It has a fairly comprehensive, and very low-priced (even for Mexicans) metro system, and I strongly recommend using it to get around, especially at rush hour.  There is much to see in Mexico City.  The main Anthropological Museum in Chapultepec Park, actually a combination historical, anthropological, archeological, art, crafts, and cultural museum, is the best museum-qua-museum I have visited in the world. (Te Papa, in Wellington, New Zealand, for me ranks second; it was first before I visited the one in Mexico City.)  The exhibits are very imaginatively set forth, are very accessible, have many illustrations of the settings in which the artifacts were found, have extensive descriptions, some with English translations, very comfortable lighting, and are set up to flow historically from the first arrivals of settlers originally from Asia, perhaps as long ago as 30,000 years B.C.E.  Great museuming is not confined to this particular museum, however.  We found it in the cultural museum in the small city of Oaxaca and in other small museums in Mexico City as well.

My impression is that the general two-class system, with variations, has continued throughout Mexican history.  It was obviously a feature of the Spanish dominion which lasted until the War of Independence, 1810-1820.  It was quickly re-established by a home-grown ruling class, which had developed under the Spanish, leading to a revolt following the disastrous (for Mexico) Mexican-American War of 1846-48 (in which they lost more than half of their territory).  A fledgling democracy with some land-reform followed, with a strange interlude in the 1860s of a French “Emperor” backed by French troops.  When they were thrown out, a democracy again was established but quickly turned into another home-grown dictatorship (of President Porfirio Diaz).  “Porfirism” did bring in major foreign investment and the beginnings of industrialization but with much repression of the mass of the population by the Mexican ruling class. The modern revolution of 1910-1920 (Pancho Villa, Emiliano Zapata, et al) threw out the Porfiristas, democracy was re-established, and major advances in education, health care, and social services were made.  But one party, the PRI, remained in power for approximately 70 years from that time to the last election, in 2000, of the rightist current President Vicente Fox.  The two-class system has been somewhat modified, of course (but see the last paragraph).  However, Mexico still has one of the widest income/wealth gaps in the world for a semi-developed country.  This has widened under NAFTA which, among other things, made it very easy for Mexican owners to send their profits abroad instead of having to re-invest them in their own country.

Travel Tip III.  If you can manage it, the winter is a good time to go.  The weather is mild and dry.  There are not too many tourists about.  Be prepared for some world-class museuming, some magnificent Spanish colonial era baroque churches, lots and lots of people in Mexico City, friendliness, enough people who speak at least some English (we both speak some tourist Spanish and that does help), lots and lots of history, and of course the profusion of the great mural art of Rivera, Orozco and Siquieros, as well as others in public buildings, especially in Mexico City.  You can even see, in the Palacio des Belles Artes in Mexico City, a recreation of the mural that Rivera painted on commission at Rockefeller Center in New York City that John D. had destroyed because, among other things, it had a portrait of Lenin in it.  (It also features Marx, Engels and Darwin, but old J.D. apparently was particularly incensed about Lenin being there).  And oh yes, there is the Trotsky House where he was murdered by an agent of Stalin, and much, much of the art and life of Frida Kahlo, the two-time wife of Diego Rivera, an inamorata of Trotsky as well as others, and a fine artist in her right.

I could not finish this column without a thought or two on the illegal immigration problem.  In an article written by a senior Mexican economist with a Ph.D. from the London School of Economics, Dr. Ricardo Pasco (The [Miami] Herald Mexico, 12/28/05) I was surprised to learn that only a minority of illegal immigrants from Mexico are unemployed farmers.  The majority are people who have jobs and at least some education but simply cannot make enough to support their families as the NAFTA-driven ever-widening income gap continues on its un-merry way.  As Dr. Pascoe says: “The problem is that wages are very low in Mexico.”  Building a wall is one way, theoretically, to solve the problem for the U.S.  (Yes, it does seem as if the Republican Right and the Israeli Right have the same set of advisors, doesn’t it?)  But criminalizing illegal immigration would likely not act as a deterrent (since the vast majority of illegal immigrants don’t get caught and likely wouldn’t even with a wall) and accomplish nothing more than expanding the United States’ already vast prison system, at taxpayer expense.  (The Georgites would likely privatize it, to provide more profits for their prison-operator campaign contributors.)  Penalizing US employers of illegal immigrants would likely be effective to some extent, except that among some the Republicans’ biggest campaign contributors are those employers who use and exploit illegal immigrant labor.  (Just imagine what would happen to their profits if they had to pay US workers a living wage.)  The best long-term solution for both countries?  Repeal NAFTA so that manufacturing jobs would stay here and profits that the Mexican ruling class makes could not so easily be exported and they might have to re-invest in income- and job-producing enterprises at home.  Just a thought.  And with it, I end this quick visit to Mexico.

WHY THE PATRIOT ACT, REDUX: FASCISM IN THE HERE AND NOW, CONTINUED

Column No. 91 By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH  - January 5, 2006

Here, once again, is my short definition of fascism: “Fascism is a politico-economic system in which there is: total executive branch control of the government; no independent judiciary; no Constitution that embodies the Rule of Law standing above the people who run the government; no inherent rights or liberties; a single national ideology that first demonizes and then criminalizes all political, religious, and ideological opposition to it; and total corporate determination of economic, fiscal, and regulatory policy.”   (If you want to see my longer definitions, please refer to my columns of May 27, 2004 “On Fascism -- And The Georgites” and of Jan 27, 2005 “Comparing George W. Bush and Adolf Hitler”).

No sooner had I finished writing (on Dec. 14-15) the column published last week that, as I noted at the end of it, relevant events suddenly started occurring at breakneck speed.  This column is based on two Short Short Shots about those events that I published on the Weblog of Michael Carmichael’s The Planetary Movement.  The President of the United States, George W. Bush, and surrogates including the Secretary of State and the Attorney General, made a series of speeches and statements given over the weekend of Dec. 16-18, 2005, concerning actions in domestic surveillance that he has been taking since shortly after 9/11.  He and they claimed that he can do just about anything he wants to in the realm of the criminal justice system, in investigating and otherwise dealing with American citizens, regardless of the law and the Constitution, just as long as he says that he is acting within the law and the Constitution, and is doing what he is doing in order to “protect American lives” in his role as Commander-in-Chief.

On CNN on the morning of 12/19/2005, Alberto Gonzales, the Attorney General who as White House Counsel had described the Geneva Conventions concerning treatment of prisoners-of-war, part of the Constitution by its own requirements, as “quaint,” described the Foreign Intelligence Services Act of 1978 as “out-of-date.” The FISA clearly prohibits the use of foreign intelligence services for spying on US citizens. Just as Gonzales did not advise the President to attempt re-negotiation of the Geneva Conventions, he did not in this instance advise the President to go to Congress to have the FISA amended to meet the president’s stated needs.  No, he told the President that under his C-in-C powers, he could just do what liked to do.  George liked those words, which sound an awful lot like “dictatorship,” and went ahead and did it.

In my view, this action and its defense by the Georgites has much more to do with establishing the precedent for assumption of dictatorial l power by him in any circumstance he “deems necessary under his power as C-in-C” than it does with any specifics of possible al-Qaeda terrorism.  And then, even more frightening that the domestic spying-without-a-warrant actions, is the incident which takes up the last third of this column. It shows that the purpose of the Patriot Act, as I have been saying for quite some time, goes well beyond “dealing with foreign terrorism.” Here is what I had to say about these events further on the PlanetMove Weblog.

As is now very widely known, even in the halls of the U.S. Congress, even by some Republicans, on Dec. 16, 2005 The New York Times published a lengthy article on how the President, by Executive Order, set up a domestic extra-legal, extra-judicial spying operation shortly after 9/11. Although the Georgites often take actions that have no legal or Constitutional authority behind them, in this case the President presumably acted under the powers given to him by the original "Patriot" Act (which among other things repealed the Fourth Amendment protection against extra-judicial search and seizure) to do just about anything he wants to US citizens and non-citizens alike residing in the United States once he, on his own authority, labels them as "terrorists."

Interestingly enough, the President offers different explanations of his actions at different times. Sometimes it's the "Patriot" Act, sometimes it's his authority as Commander-in-Chief, sometimes it is the broad "Iraq Attack" authority the Congress gave him in the fall of 2002. Whatever the supposed source of his authority is at any given moment, the White House knows that there is something fishy about it, because a) they meet on it repeatedly and b) they tried as hard as they could to prevent knowledge of it from becoming public. This is even in the light of how the President has taken every opportunity to boast about it, and how it is "protecting America," once it has become public.

Bush has already indefinitely imprisoned without any judicial/legal rights one US citizen, Jose Padilla, under his claimed "Power of the Presidency" to do just about anything he wants to in the realm of spying upon, investigating, and locking up individual citizens. Only a long and costly court struggle has changed the Padilla situation, so that he finally has access to the public criminal justice system. But regardless of the details of the Padilla case, the President's claimed power to deprive US citizens of their rights in the criminal justice system is the central issue of the "Patriot" Act.

This is why this Act (and now the Iraq Attack resolution thrown in by the Georgites for good measure) is the equivalent of the Nazi-German Enabling Act of March 27, 1933, as I have written on numerous occasions in this space. The matter of spying on library records is a distraction, a sideshow that may actually have been put into the mix by the Georgites so as to distract Congress and the American people from the real issue: the establishment of Presidential dictatorial power over any and all actions of US citizens, just as long as he labels them as "terrorist." (I should note that I wrote the above sentence the day before the story about the library spying that I discuss below broke. Obviously, the library spying powers are hardly trivial, which makes the whole thing even worse.)

Does the President need this secret wire/electronic-communications tap program in order to fight terrorism? No. What Federal judge would deny a warrant to the FBI (domestic security agency) coming before him or her with an affidavit of probable cause in a case of suspected terrorism? None. (And in this instance the judge before which investigators would go presides over a secret court dealing with intelligence matters, presumably chosen for sympathy with Administration power in this regard. [Actually, none ever have: see The Progress Report of Dec. 19, 2005, http://www.americanprogressaction.org/site/apps/nl/newsletter2.asp?c=klLWJcP7H&b=917053). However, there are still a number of judges (although the number is dwindling fast as more and more Georgite judges are placed on the bench) who would a) deny a warrant to an agency that is specifically prohibited by law from domestic surveillance, the National Security Agency, and b) to any agency asking for a warrant for spying for reasons of assumed “terrorism” without some indication of probable cause that that would be the case.

This is what Cheney and his puppet are concerned with. They want to be able to spy on and then lock up without recourse to the public, rights-protected, criminal justice system, as they deem necessary, any American citizen for what they would label “terrorism.” This would eventually include opposing the government on any issue they deem having to do with anything they would call “terrorism” without having to make some kind of reasonable case for supporting that accusation. Certainly opposition to their current foreign and domestic policies could be labeled by them as "terrorism." After all, they and their surrogates on the Privatized Ministry of Propaganda have repeatedly referred to their opponents as "traitors." It is a short step from traitor to terrorist, and to simplify matters for Bush, both words begin with a "T."

The Times held their article for one year under White House pressure. That's not good. The Times released the article on the day the Senate took up reauthorization of the Patriot Act. That's good. Hopefully Senator Feingold and those Democrats with a devotion to Constitutional Democracy, and maybe even a few of those so-called "moderate" Republicans who will be called to account here, will get to the real, central issues of the Act. If they do, we may have seen the beginning of the end of the march toward Georgite Theocratic Fascism which to my mind has to this point been inexorable.

That was the essence of my first piece on The Planetary Movement on this issue.  Then came this one, and all of a sudden I am very pessimistic again.

"Agents' visit chills UMass Dartmouth senior [he had requested 'suspect' book thru library loan program]. By AARON NICODEMUS, Standard-Times staff writer (12/17/05, anicodemus@s-t.com)

"NEW BEDFORD -- A senior at UMass Dartmouth was visited by federal agents two months ago, after he requested a copy of Mao Tse-Tung's tome on Communism called 'The Little Red Book.'

"Two history professors at UMass Dartmouth, Brian Glyn Williams and Robert Pontbriand, said the student told them he requested the book through the UMass Dartmouth library's interlibrary loan program.

"The student, who was completing a research paper on Communism for Professor Pontbriand's class on fascism and totalitarianism, filled out a form for the request, leaving his name, address, phone number and Social Security number. He was later visited at his parents' home in New Bedford by two agents of the Department of Homeland Security, the professors said."

How many more of these do we need for people to understand that fascism isn't coming to the U.S.; it's here. In small doses for the time-being, but here nevertheless. As Bush said over the weekend of 12/16-18, he can and will do anything he pleases to "protect" the American people against anything that he deems, defines, or desires to be, the "threat of terrorism."

Of course, visiting a student who checked out a copy of Mao's "Little Red Book" couldn't possibly have anything to do with "fighting terrorism" as Bush has defined it. For him, terrorism starts and ends with al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden and those directly related to him. He made that clear in his radio address of Dec. 17. That Mao was one of history's ultra-secularists while bin Laden's dream would be to establish a world-wide theocratic-Islamicist empire puts them at each other's throats, or would do so were Mao alive. Actually, the present-day Chinese government is engaged in a low-level but ongoing occasionally armed struggle against Fundamentalist Muslim separatists in their own Wild West.

This use of domestic spying by an agency confined by the law to functions outside of the United States, without bothering to apply for a search warrant (which would have to be based on probable cause) even from a totally secret "anti-terrorism" court, concerning a matter that has not the hairsbreadth connection to Islamicist terrorism, is about domestic oppression, and nothing else.

We heard words about "fighting terrorism" in Berlin in the Spring of 1933. And in that Springtime for Hitler, unless you were a Communist or a certain kind of socialist, Hitlerite fascism came in on little cat feet just as the Georgite fascistic fog is enveloping us in the U.S. As George Santayana said, he who fails to learn from history is condemned to repeat it. At least the Germans of the late Weimar Republic and Early Nazi Periods had the excuse that nothing like Hitlerism had ever happened before. As Georgite theocratic fascism inexorably advances, the American people and their elected representatives do not have that excuse.

WHY THE PATRIOT ACT, REDUX: FASCISM IN THE HERE AND NOW

Column No. 90 By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH - December 22, 2005

Here, once again, is my short definition of fascism: “Fascism is a politico-economic system in which there is: total executive branch control of the government; no independent judiciary; no Constitution that embodies the Rule of Law standing above the people who run the government; no inherent rights or liberties; a single national ideology that first demonizes and then criminalizes all political, religious, and ideological opposition to it; and total corporate determination of economic, fiscal, and regulatory policy.”   (If you want to see my longer definitions, please refer to my columns of May 27, 2004 “On Fascism -- And The Georgites” and of Jan 27, 2005 “Comparing George W. Bush and Adolf Hitler”).

On Tuesday, Dec. 13, our Editor/Publisher, Judge Stephen Gheen ran the following commentary:

Doug Thompson of Capitol Hill Blue has just released another macabre insight into President Bush.  Bush summoned Republican Congressional leaders to the White House to urge extension of the Patriot Act without significant changes to the expansive provisions of that Act.  Thompson reports the following exchange occurred during the meeting.  GOP leaders told Bush that his hardcore push to renew the more onerous provisions of the act could further alienate conservatives still mad at the President from his botched attempt to nominate White House Counsel Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court.

“I don’t give a goddamn,” Bush retorted. “I’m the President and the Commander-in-Chief. Do it my way.”

“Mr. President,” one aide in the meeting said. “There is a valid case that the provisions in this law undermine the Constitution.”

“Stop throwing the Constitution in my face,” Bush screamed back. “It’s just a goddamned piece of paper!”

I’ve talked to three people present for the meeting that day and they all confirm that the President of the United States called the Constitution “a goddamned piece of paper.”  -- Capitol Hill Blue”

One may have to take what is published in Capitol Hill Blue with a grain of salt or two.  Two respected, and certainly anti-Georgite, political analysts who are good friends of mine have reservations about its credibility, especially on specifics.  However, even if Bush did not utter those exact words (one of my friends surmised that he would have said something like “F--- the Constitution” rather than the more literary version of rejection quoted above) there is plenty in his actions that demonstrates that the “goddamned piece of paper” reference is exactly how he feels about it.  For example, as I have said on numerous occasions in these columns: the assumption of the independent power to declare war, the trashing of the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Amendments, the ignoring of treaties that are part of the Constitution, the fact that the arguments of his surrogate Cheney (or is it the other way round?) against the McCain anti-torture amendment turned around Cheney’s absolute determination to have “nothing interfere with the power of the President.”

Put that together with other major features of the Georgite reign that fit in with the definition of fascism above and it seems to me that with the statement quoted above, or a position embodied by them if those words were not actually uttered, we are now in this country living on the brink of fascism.  How will it be implemented here, one might ask.  Through the Patriot Act, is the answer.

Why do the Georgites want these powers?  Certainly not because they have to have them in order to “fight terrorism” (any more than the War on Iraq is necessary “to fight terrorism”).  If the Georgites really wanted to do that, they already can under pre-Patriot Act statutes.  For example, there is plenty of evidence, as gathered by the 9/11 Commission itself, that the plans for the World Trade Center horror could have been detected and the attack aborted.  Further, European nations are constantly finding and arresting potential terrorists without enacting basic changes in their criminal justice systems.

The purpose of the Patriot Act would not be, it would seem, further to strengthen “Homeland Security,” beyond providing the FBI with unprecedented independent powers of surveillance.  However, report after report, from a multitude of bipartisan sources over the last three years (most recently, Dec. 5, 2005, from the 9/11 Commission itself which called his efforts a “dismal failure”), directly contradicts Bush's promises in this regard, citing dangerous under-funding, misplaced priorities, over-reliance on private industry and dire neglect at local, state, and federal levels.”

So if the Patriot Act is not about catching about particular terrorists and not about improving homeland security in general, what is it about?  By the process of elimination it would seem that, it cannot be about anything else but giving the Georgites broad-ranging powers of oppression and repression against any kind of dissent, verbal, written or physical, legal or illegal, to virtually any of its policies and programs, here at home.  With the powers granted to the President by the Act as it now stands he can label anyone he wants to, non-citizen and citizen alike, as a “terrorist” or an abettor of same, and lock them up indefinitely, without charges, without access to any part of the judicial system, and without any public notification, and apparently order them to be tortured as well.

If, in the realm of civil rights and liberties, the powers granted to the President seem to bear a strong resemblance to those granted to Adolf Hitler by the German Enabling Act of March 24, 1933 (see my TPJ columns of June 3 and June 24, 2004) in my view that is no coincidence.  Now one might say: “But Hitler and his financial backers were looking for ways to suppress major political and economic dissent from the Communist and Socialist Parties and the powerful German trade unions.  No equivalent of any of those powerful forces exists here, now.”  That is true.  However, consider the following.

Perhaps Bush and his financial backers may not have done very well in advance planning for dealing with the situation in Iraq following the invasion.  But dollars to donuts they know very well what is going to happen in this country as the chickens come home to roost as a result of  their policies on taxation, the economy, Social Security, higher education, the military, and foreign policy.  For example, when the credit crash that will surely come with the Georgites in power there might well be millions of people protesting on the streets.  And that is not the only issue that would bring people out in numbers never seen before in this country.  Think: the financial collapse of the health care delivery system under the assault of the profit-makers; the end of Social Security as we have known it under the assault of the privatizers; the next Great Depression resulting from the credit crash and the increasing export of capital; to say nothing of the results of the Draconian laws governing private thought and behavior that could be enacted in a second Bush term as part of implementing the agenda of the Christian Right.

In my view, it is to be able to very forcibly control the foreseeable massive resistance, perhaps not well organized but nevertheless massive, to the oppression and repression of the vast majority of the people of our country on behalf of the super-rich and the major corporations that form the foundation of the Georgites and Georgitism that is what the Patriot Act is all about.  Pure and simple, and frightening and fascist.

__________

Author’s note: The second half of this column draws heavily upon a column that I published on October 28, 2004, “Why the Patriot Act?’

Postscript:  As if on cue, On Dec. 16, 2005 the New York Times published a lengthy article on how the President, by Executive Order set up a domestic extra-legal, extra-judicial spying operation.  (The above column was written on Dec. 14, and is based in part on one from 10/28/04.) Although the Georgites often take actions that have no legal or Constitutional authority behind them, on this case the President presumably acted under the powers given to him by the original Patriot Act (which among other things repealed the Fourth Amendment protection against extra-judicial search and seizure) to do just about anything he wants to US citizens and non-citizens alike residing in the United States once he, on his own authority, labels them as "terrorists."

Bush has already indefinitely imprisoned without any judicial/legal rights one US citizen, Jose Padilla, under this power.  Only a long and costly court struggle has changed that situation.  But this is the central issue of the Patriot Act.  This is why it is the equivalent of the Nazi-German Enabling Act of March 27, 1933, as I have written on numerous occasions in this column.  The matter of spying on library records is a distraction, a sideshow that may actually have been put into the mix by the Georgites so as to distract Congress and the American people from the real issue: the establishment of Presidential dictatorial power over any and all actions of US citizens, just as long as he labels them as "terrorist".

The Times held their article for one year under White House pressure.  That's not good.  The Times released the article on the day the Senate took up reauthorization of the Patriot Act.  That's good.  Hopefully Senator Feingold and those Democrats with a devotion to Constitutional Democracy, and maybe even a few of those so-called "moderate" Republicans who will be called to account here, will get to the real, central issues of the Act.  If they do, we may have seen the beginning of the end of the march toward Georgite Theocratic Fascism which to my mind has to this point been inexorable.