Don't Forget "Garden Plot"

Well, now that Obama has signed the bill that repeals habeas corpus, you have to9 hand it to him: it was politically brilliant! 1) The right can't use it against him in the election. 2) Now that it's law, and he says he wouldn't dream of using it, the left has all the MORE reason to vote for him. Just imagne what somwone like Dick Cheney would do with that power.

Not that there is any reason to believe anything that Obama says. Still we know for sure that we're sunk if Michelle Bachman or Newt Gingrich gets the legal authority to imprison anyone they want without a hearing. There is the slender hope that O. would be less likely to activate Rex 84 plans [the FEMA - operated gulag of old military bases, converted to concentration camps, for use in case of "national emergency"].

This may sound like LaRouche-looniness, but there is extensive documentation of military planning for martial rule and the mass detention of citizens. Check out "Operation Garden Plot".

or just google Rex 84 and read the Wikipedia article. In particular, notice Rep. Jack Brook's attempt to ask Olover north about his involvement in such a plan. Daniel Inouye quashed the inquiry as dealing with classified matters. We never heard about it again, and, years later,  Brooks became the most senior congressman ever to lose an election. Brooks was a hero: helped write the Civil Rights Act of 1965 and drafted the articles of impeachment of Nixon. But even as the powerful chairman of the House committee overseeing government operations, he was unable to expose the threat.

So, I suppose the formal codification of presidential authority to suspend the Constitution may not be as significant as it seems: the authority has been claimed for forty years. We saw it in operation in the Twin Cities during the Republican Convention in 2008.

Oh well, they can't get me in Trapani!