Aw, Heyull No!

O.K. Bush Has Officially Crossed Into Frightening.

I will speak on the nomination of Harriet Miers in a bit but first this:

"I'm concerned about what an avian flu outbreak could mean for the United States and the world," he told reporters during a Rose Garden news conference. Such an deadly event would raise difficult questions, such as how a quarantine might be enforced, he said.

"One option is the use of a military that's able to plan and move," he said. "So that's why I put it on the table. I think it's an important debate for Congress to have.”...

“"I think the president ought to have all options on the table," Bush said, then corrected himself, "all assets on the table -- to be able to deal with something this significant."

The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 bans the military from participating in police-type activity on U.S. soil.

Bush began discussing the possibility of changing the law last month, in the aftermath of the government's sluggish response to civil unrest following Hurricane Katrina.

"I want there to be a robust discussion about the best way for the federal government, in certain extreme circumstances, to be able to rally assets for the good of the people," he told reporters September 26.

Gene Healy, a senior editor at the conservative Cato Institute, said Bush would risk undermining "a fundamental principle of American law" by tinkering with the act, which does not hinder the military's ability to respond to a crisis.

What the president seems to forget is that already have an entire national agency devoted to contagious disease containment. It’s called the Centers for Disease Control.

Do you have any idea how much power what he proposes would give him? The ability to lock down neighborhoods, detain people, restrict travel between states? To effectively put areas of the country under martial law?

My Gawd.

And before everyone tells me I’m over reacting, what happened when we gave this man the power to declare war without congressional approval?

Yeah.

So let’s get on those representatives people, right away.

House

Senate

Fool Me Once...

But the nomination by the President of Harriet Mier is more of the same. As much as President Bush complains about judges “legislating from the bench”, he continues to put up under-qualified nominees who have long standing connections to him or his family that if they do not feel indebted to him, probably share his viewpoints on Constitutional Law enough to vote the way he wants. Not that we know that since Mier has not written one word on Constitutional Law. And not that every president before hasn’t tried to stack the bench, but we’ve never had someone this unqualified and so obviously in the presidents pocket. Heck, he keeps publicly reassuring the Conservatives that she is in his pocket. Given the uproar over the posting of Michael Brown, it’s amazing he would to so idiotic as to engage in a piece of cronyism so blatant as to have Pat Buchanan pitching a fit on Good Morning America.

Call me paranoid, but I have a feeling that Bush is hoping that the Right will get so incensed that the Left will support her nomination for her just to piss them off. Either that, or he’s an idiot.

The fact is the Supreme Court is a separate branch of the out government intended to check the power of the Executive and Legislative branches by examining new laws against the Constitution. That is it’s job. That why judicial appointments to the Supreme Court are for life, so that no one is holding anything over the judges heads. But when you have someone so closely politically and personally connected with the President, someone who has never even tried a single case in her life, she is not going to forget who put her there

And then there the recent ruling by the GAO that the adminstartion was in fact illegally diseminating propaganda through the News.

Can I say he's evil now Karen? Please?