The slippery slide martial law provisions into law in dead of night

That’s why it is called Congress and not Progress

 

Transposing the 'i' and 't' in "martial" gives the title of the thread a very different meaning.

I thought it had something to do with writing into law things like "Husband must purchase $$$ of jewelry for forgetting wife's birthday" and things like that.

 

The Republicans are planning for a dictatorship.

 

To play devil's advocate, there are perhaps some situations where this could be used appropriately. We all heard about the rioting and theft that was rampant in New Orleans around the time of Hurricane Katrina. Specifying natural disasters as a situation in which the military can act as a police force would have allowed the US to better maintain control of an already bad situation.

Thats not to say that i like the provision. The "any other condition" phrase in it screams for abuse. I'm also against the fact that it was passed into law without anyone knowing about it. But like i said, i can see a situation where it may be better if the military was capable of stepping in to help restore order.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(priusenvy @ Feb 21 2007, 03:40 AM) [snapback]393812[/snapback]</div>

That one confused me too.

Tom

 

How far back on here do we need to go to see a pile of threads bashing Bush for not taking control of New Orleans after Katrina?

I looked up Liberal in Websters, and translated from English into the Reality, it means: Weak with short term memory.

Just so you can sleep better at night, this law is intended to allow Bush to seize control of the country in the event of a catastrophic event such as the election of another Clinton or anyone named Hussein. :lol:

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(mojo @ Feb 21 2007, 05:27 AM) [snapback]393826[/snapback]</div>

Much of the groundwork for this is already in place, under the guise of protecting us from terrorism - can anyone say "Patriot Act"?

Webster's defines terrorism as: "The unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence to intimidate or coerce societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons."

I think this needs to be redefined to include the subversion of laws meant to protect the checks and balances that have helped prevent dictatorships (I am working from an older dictionary, btw).

Not all terrorism is accomplished by violence or force.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(MarinJohn @ Feb 21 2007, 12:27 AM) [snapback]393755[/snapback]</div>

Let's be clear on the facts. Some as-yet-unidentified person slipped this into the bill at the last minute. It was apparently not the intent of the Congress to grant such sweeping powers. It was a trick. Those of you who think the President should be able to declare martial law at will, surely you don't think that legal change should have occurred by subterfuge? But as mentioned in this thread, that does seem to be typical for our Republican party these days. In my opinion, whoever put this into the bill is a traitor, pure and simple, and should be caught, tried, and if found guilty, punished in accordance with the laws governing treason.

I routinely read a very left-wing website -- Counterpunch -- where I find out facts that I would never see mentioned in mainstream media. At various times, various authors have asserted that DHS has let contracts for construction of large-scale internment camps (concentration camps) in the US, presumably for the internment of US citizens in anticipation of times of civil unrest. I never took the time to track down the truth or fiction of that, because I considered it somewhat beyond plausible. With this latest manuever, maybe I should take that more seriously. Heck, if I wasn't on somebody's list before, I probably am now for saying this.

EDIT:

I'll be damned -- the US DHS did let a contract to build internment camps. And separately, there's a Park Service contract to to rehab the old ones used in WWII.

But not to worry: Fox News assures me that these are only for immigrants, and that they're probably not actually building them -- yet. I feel so reassured.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,198456,00.html