Bush's Way or the Highway (Chain Gang)

Making Putin Look Like James Madison

By CHRISTOPHER BRAUCHLI
CounterPunch

"It is time I set the record straight. I applaud all George Bush has done as president during the past 6.5 years and if any one reads anything I have written during the past five years as threatening stabilization efforts in Iraq, attribute it to my impoverished style and not malevolence towards Mr. Bush and his foreign policy for which I have the highest regard.

Furthermore, like George W. Bush, I, too, am a big fan of Vladimir Putin and I was delighted to see that at the same time Mr. Bush was signing his most recent executive order, Mr. Putin was strengthening police-surveillance powers and broadening the definition of extremism in Russia giving the Russians the same kind of protection Mr. Bush is giving all of us.....

It says that property and interests of certain defined bad people can be confiscated without advance notice to those bad people. The order doesn’t apply to everyone in the United States. It only applies to people who have what is referred to in the EO as a “constitutional presence” in the United States. That term is not defined in the order but presumably it applies only to people who have the complete panoply of constitutional rights accorded citizens. Thus, terrorists and unlawful combatants who lack those rights are probably not affected by the EO.

Here are some of the kinds of bad people who pursuant to the EO may find their property confiscated without notice.

People who undermine “efforts to promote economic reconstruction and political reform in Iraq or to provide humanitarian assistance to the Iraqi people.” I fear that columns I have written making fun of the failed reconstruction efforts in Iraq or the torture in Abu Ghraib could be considered undermining the efforts of the government to continue engaging in failed reconstruction efforts and that was not my intent......"