How significant is the ‘first official act’ as President?  Does it set the tone for the administration?  Does it just cater to the base?  Is it even relevant, historically?

Joseph Wheelan, with George Mason University's History News Network, reminds us of a dangerous assault on open and honest government. It came in the form of George W. Bush’s Executive Order 13233: The Presidential Records Act Executive Order.

From Whellan's article:

"...this is not just another blow against openness; Bush's Executive Order 13233 could change history — literally — by restricting historians' access to materials that help them document and ultimately judge a president's actions, lapses, and principles.

Executive Order 13233 gives ex-presidents nearly unlimited discretionary authority to prohibit the release of their papers..."

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We've all seen cartoon scenes similar to the following:

A character takes an object of frustration, smashes it on the ground, and jumps all over it.

That's what a recent Presidential Executive Order does to the separation of powers.

I don't know if this has been covered in any depth, but I haven't seen any major dissection of it, so I thought I'd post.

On January 29, 2008, President Bush issued an innocuously-named Executive order. He seems to be a man of few talents, but he has raised the naming of bills with innocuous sounding names to high art. Like a master magician's sleight-of-hand, this administration's sleight-of-word is phenomenal.

Follow me below the fold to learn how he turned a reduction in spending into the end of Government oversight with nothing more than his magician's pen...

I was going to make this first post an introduction explaining how I came to be reading blogs everyday, how it all started in the Fall O' Aught Three...how I came to bookmark the old Calpundit blog because it had the best blogroll on the web, even though I didn't know what a blogroll was called at the time...ah memories. He used to have a mountain of traditional media links on the side of his page, links going places like the Toledo Blade and The Houston Chronicle, The New York Times, and The Seattle PI. I bookmarked it and used his page as my gateway for reading the news. Then, of course, the TANG story got big and Kevin got deep in the weeds, starting to link to more of those funny-named websites sitting below the traditional news sites, so I started reading those too.

Anyway, I was going to write some long pointless post of introduction like that, but decided no, I won't do that. Instead, I'm going share a video I put together in the time I should have spent writing a better first post. I've tried to repackage Sen. Whitehouse's recent speech into a condensed version, one that hopefully relays to the viewer the import of his revelations in an understandable, but shorter, manner. After the jump.

PREFACE:

A group of distinguished intelligence and military officers, diplomats, and law enforcement professionals delivered an urgent message this morning to the chairman and the ranking minority member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, calling on them to hold the nomination of Judge Michael Mukasey until he takes a clear position on the legality of waterboarding.

Their message strongly endorses the view of former judge advocates general that waterboarding "is inhumane, is torture, is illegal.” The intelligence veterans added it is also a notoriously unreliable way to acquire accurate information.

They noted that the factors cited by the president and Mukasey as obstacles to his giving an opinion on waterboarding can be easily solved by briefing Mukasey on waterboarding and on C.I.A. interrogation methods.

What is currently making a majority of Americans apathetic and complacent?  Why does it seem like we care more about the recent celebrity news than the atrocities our country is constantly committing?  What can make us WAKE UP?  Will anything?  

This ruling is sweet. And even if Bush refuses to follow the law on this one, the precedent is set for the next President (assuming it's not a GOP co-conspirator) to finally release the Reagan/Bush Iran/Contra records, and details about the Cheney White House 12 years from now.

Judge limits ex-presidents' control of public records
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Presidents don't have indefinite veto power over which records are made public after they've left office, a federal judge has ruled.

More ==>

Patraeus, Patraeus, Patraeus.....

Hopefully everybody realizes by now that the Bush Policy is a 2 headed serpent. The one that is public, and the one that is private. A couple of months ago a National Security Presedential Directive 51 established Bush, or any president from now on, as the dictator in the case of an emergency. That might explain why Bush issued a notice continuing the national emergency while every one was focused on Patraeus. I doubt the MSM will pick up on it.

Executive Order 12919 (National Defense Industrial Resources Preparedness) is the Godzilla of Executive Orders. In times of "national emergency" it allows the executive branch to seize complete control and ignore Congress.

Besides giving the executive branch the power of life and death over most of the population, it explicitly makes the federal budget the executive's personal plaything for giving money directly to favored contractors, and it allows the government to be run directly by consultants.

In practice, it puts all power into the hands of the National Security Council (Fourth Branch himself!) and the National Security adviser Stephen Hadley. Cabinet officers control all infrastructure and resources while consultants and appointees that will run the country. And it gives control of much of the banking system to the Export-Import Bank under James Lambright (who?).

The question is, how many of these steps have already been implemented? Junior refers to our current "emergency" in his signing statements, but few people realize the legal power of  a declaration of "emergency."

So let's make the jump and see what's there. They say the devil's in the detail, and man is that ever true in this case!

If a jury could believe this wild tale by the government, they could believe anything. And thanks to the president's new executive order, we are all in danger now--of government terror.

On July 19, 2007 the Bushman signed Exec Order # 13438 which allows the Federal government to seize your assets if you pose a significant risk of commiting an act that would threaten the stability of Iraq. Let's examine this oxymoron: first of all, Iraq is anything but stable. In fact, it hasn't been stable since we attacked the sovereign nation 4 years ago. We have gotten ourselves mired in a religious civil war that is un-winnable. But, back to the point, this Executive Order becomes law 30 days after it is issued unless Congress takes action. Let's see, they are on recess now, haven't responded to date, and are not due to return until after Labor Day. Houston, we have a problem.  So, let's see what this means: if you are an activist and speak out against the war, your bank account, your house, your car and any other assets you own can be frozen, meaning not accessible for use by you. This recent Order distresses me to the point of sleeplessness. What's a body to do?

So, something that was quietly said on some program I was listening to this week, caught my attention.  I prefer not to live in a world of paranoia (i.e. even 'irritated' that in the first stories on the MN bridge collapse, it had to even be said that it wasn't terrorism), but precedents are clearly numerous and easily found, that indicate this would not be beyond BushCorrosion, Inc.

More...

I know that a big chunk of the best and brightest of the progressive blogosphere are right now having a night cap at YearlyKos, but not all of the best and brightest are here.

Jeepers, SNAP OUT OF IT!  Life goes on outside YearlyKos!  Bush signed an Executive Order today declaring a nat*onal emerg*ncy -- and nobody's covering it at Daily Kos.  Yeah, I'm worried enough that I'm not using all the vowels here.  Apparently today's EO freezes the assets of those persons or parties who are acting against the sovereign elected government of Lebanon (read: Syria).

But the extra fillip is the declaration of a state of national em*rgency because of perceived threats to our national security.  What???

Wikipedia:

Sippenhaft or Sippenhaftung (English: "kin liability") was a legal practice in Nazi Germany whereby relatives of those accused of crimes against the state were held to be equally responsible and were arrested and sometimes executed.

George W. Bush:

all property and interests in property that are in the United States, that hereafter come within the United States, or that are or hereafter come within the possession or control of any United States person, including any overseas branch, of the following persons are blocked and may not be transferred, paid, exported, withdrawn, or otherwise dealt in:

(i) any person determined by the Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the Secretary of State:
[...]
(C) to be a spouse or dependent child of any person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order;

"A blueprint for instituting martial law in the United States."

"The old blue bloods have taken over."

These are just a few of the claims being bandied about by bloggers on the Internet and radio talk-show hosts alarmed by President Bush's plan for the federal government's survival in the aftermath of a catastrophic attack or natural disaster.

The plan, embodied in National Security Presidential Directive 51, was issued without fanfare by Bush on May 9. It draws upon blueprints prepared by past administrations stretching back to the Truman administration. The latest directive underscores long-standing presidential authority to declare a "catastrophic emergency" and coordinate "enduring constitutional government."

But it also awards the president broader authority to take over disaster recovery from state officials and calls on federal authorities to provide "appropriate support" to the vice president to orchestrate any post-attack recovery, if necessary.

READ MORE.......
READ MORE.......

Credit to : mysanantonio.com

Bush's July 17 Executive Order provides the President with the authority to confiscate the assets of "certain persons" who oppose the US led war in Iraq, as reported by Michel Chossudovsky, a Canadian economist and professor of economics at the University of Ottawa.

Today, HineSight headlines the story, referring to the order that aims to criminalize the antiwar movement:

Bush order allows anti-war advocates' assets to be seized

The Executive Order criminalizes the antiwar movement. It is intended to "blocking property" of US citizens and organizations actively involved in the peace movement. It allows the Department of Defense to interfere in financial affairs and instructs the Treasury to "block the property" and/or confiscate/ freeze the assets of "Certain Persons" involved in antiwar activities.

Follow the link, and you get a lengthy description of the Executive Order from Prof. Chossudovsky.

UPDATE: Executive Order text is here. Is Chossudovsky's interpretation a stretch?

We are three Congressional votes away from making history. When Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton started the women’s suffrage movement and proposed that women had the right to vote their movement was highly controversial. Though their group started out with a few members, it slowly gained overwhelming support, proving that a small group of dedicated individuals, can indeed, change the world. These brave trailblazers demanded justice and rights, and they knew that those in power did not possess or seak the truth. This message should ring in the ears of three or more members of Congress. These individuals need to remember that small group of people is all it takes to stir change. I hold these truths to be self evident. That no American citizen is above the law, and that all men and women are created equal. When members of the Bush administration are held accountable then the American people will be counted.

In today's truthout editorial, http://www.truthout.org/... a new executive order is revealed:  http://www.whitehouse.gov/...