some evil cometh.

*

"When President Bush last week signed the bill outlawing the torture of detainees, he quietly reserved the right to bypass the law under his powers as commander in chief.
After approving the bill last Friday, Bush issued a ''signing statement" -- an official document in which a president lays out his interpretation of a new law -- declaring that he will view the interrogation limits in the context of his broader powers to protect national security. This means Bush believes he can waive the restrictions, the White House and legal specialists said.

[snip]

Some legal specialists said yesterday that the president's signing statement, which was posted on the White House website but had gone unnoticed over the New Year's weekend, raises serious questions about whether he intends to follow the law." (link)

this is really quite remarkable, if not surprising. the litmus test on all this executive power is whether its ok for the other party to have the same executive power. i won't dignify that with a response - but trying to predict the endgame implications for that test are quite far-reaching. presumably, the geniuses in the OVP will have thought this through a little bit - particularly given the very real possibility that they'll find their asses being shared around a jail in 3 years time. surely they have a plan. what is it?

in the past, we could kinda understand their motivations - they openly said that they wanted to build a permanent majority - in which case it would make 'sense' to give the(ir) president extraordinary powers. but by any ordinary measure, those days are gone - there's a flip o' the coin chance that the next president wont be a repuglican (unless bush gets impeached), and there's a very good chance the Bush will be (what is usually called) a lame duck for the next 3 years. yet we have this odd spectacle of them continuing to demand uber-power for the Executive (see their latest shenanigans wrt to padilla, and spying, and torture. for starters).

perhaps the machine has become so unhinged that their claims of 'legality' are proceeding on-plan despite the reality that the rest of the plan is falling apart at the seams.

or perhaps they think that they need to continue making the legal argument that the president can do anything, because otherwise they will all be thrown in jail and are happy to jettison decades of legal argument (and who knows the extent of the damage they will cause via precedent) for the sake of trying to save their skin in case they lose the next election.

putting aside those 2 possibilities, we are left with some ugly options - are they giving the president lots of self-serving powers because they 'know' that they'll always be the governing power? (if i was them, i'd be 're-mantling' all the checks and balances that i could resurrect - cos they might be out of power for decades.)

how do they know they will be permanently in charge? there are only 2 ways that i can think of - the first is that they control the voting machines, and the second is that kingeorge does away with elections altogether. (none of this is new, of course, im simply trying to consider it in the light that they are still mad about presidential power despite the fact that they are soon likely to be giving that power to their opposition)

i dont really doubt that they own the voting machines, but they only just pulled off an election last time - it'll be much more difficult to do that when there are millions marching in the street. no-one will believe them (although i said the same last year). it'd be much easier to 'postpone' an election - and the more power the shovel to the president, the more likely they will be able to pull it off.

to believe otherwise, you have to believe cheney when he says that he thinks that the president should have much more power. even when its a democrat. in the near future. in an environment where the public is likely to be furious at the repugs for a decade or more.

some evil cometh.