even though I’m not a lawyer I have read a lot of legal documents and this one seems clearly limited by the need to make a finding of either an act of violence or actions in support of violence, that interfere with one or another aspects of the Iraqi occupation.

“any person determined by the Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense,i) to have committed, or to pose a significant risk of committing, an act or acts of violence that have the purpose or effect of:

(A) threatening the peace or stability of Iraq or the Government of Iraq; or

(B) undermining efforts to promote economic reconstruction and political reform in Iraq or to provide humanitarian assistance to the Iraqi people;”

(The rest of it is just blah blah blah.)

Speech is not an act, and it certainly isn’t violence, so just speaking out against the occupation, or the Iraqi government, or reconstruction wouldn’t trigger any sanction – at least not under this order.

It is late and I'm tired and a review by an actual constitutional lawyer would be a good idea. Meantime I'm off to bed, and I'm not going to lose any sleep over this one.

Military Commissions Act was similarly structured with regard to its administration.

The opinion of the Secretary of Defense, or the opinion of the Secretary of State, or the opinion of the Secretary of the Treasury may be held as the sole basis for seizure of assets and people. All financial entities that can be documented to have financial transactions with this entity may also be subject to seizure.

The opinion of any of these subordinates of the president will be held inviolate and no avenue of redress will be made available.

Sounds to me like the Chimporer just delegated the power of kings to his cabinet.

It's a good thing we have the Constitution to protect us, eh?

From the signing statement...

"...any person determined by the Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense,i) to have committed, or to pose a significant risk of committing, an act or acts of violence that have the purpose or effect of:..."

Plus the items listed after this warning against being someone who might do something the Bush administration doesn't like, include giving support to someone the administration doesn't like...

So, if I contribute to Gush Shalom, an Israeli organization which fights for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the members of whom actually talk to members of Hamas, could I not be vulnerable to some kind of federal action against me, and purely on the fucking whim of this president?

For example, the act of critizing Dear Leader inatimawar is an act of treason. Eh?

"Watch what you say. Watch what you do."

No authoritarians were tortured in the writing of this post.

Wasn’t meaning to be ironic but sometimes I sound that way unintentionally, tone of voice defect, must try to do better.

The point of my comment, and I should have been clearer, is that this Executive Order does nothing more than extend a series of others going back to May 2003 regarding funding for groups or individuals who employ or support violent acts in opposition to established US national interests. This particular one adds specificity regarding Iraq. The overt intent (and I’m not going to speculate on possible sub rosa intentions of this administration, they can go on endlessly and the overt stuff is more than bad enough) is to block sources of funding for those violently opposing American law and foreign policy. None of the prohibitions extend to speech, which is what was claimed -or alluded to - by Burnt Orange and seconded by Sarah.

Don’t get me wrong, for the record George W. Bush is a bad, bad man and has done (is doing) many bad things. If ever a gang deserved to be tarred and feathered and ridden out of town on a rail, it is this bunch. But this particular Executive Order doesn’t impinge substantively on anyone’s free speech rights beyond what has been in place for the last four years, and even that is pretty mild compared to what Roosevelt did with internment of Japanese Americans or the harassment and intimidation of German Americans under Wilson.

To answer your specific question, no (with caveat). Gush Shalom isn’t one of the organizations listed as supplying funds to violent groups. Talking to Hamas, even speaking out in support of the political aims of Hamas, isn’t enough to trigger seizure of funds. To be sure, Hamas is on the list so if Gush Shalom gave money to Hamas, and you gave money to Gush Shalom, you could find yourself having a conversation with the FBI - but unless you are a substantial donor or fundraiser, probably not. What the courts, and juries, have held so far is that contributing to or raising funds for one group that then passes funds on to another is protected unless the whole thing is a deliberate and knowing conspiracy to evade the law.

I don’t mean to be sanguine about it, but there is a quantitative difference between what this administration asserts as its powers and what those powers in fact actually are. It will take years to sort out, in the courts and hopefully with specific legislation under a Democratic administration and congress, but it will get sorted out as has been done with these kinds of issues in the past.

Meantime - and this is my opinion, others should by all means do as they wish - I think it is a mistake to overstate the magnitude of BushCo’s actions. I appreciate the confidence placed by many in the “Overton Window” effect, and absolutely agree on the necessity of being very vocal and loud in making clear where and when the Constitution is being violated. However, in this specific case I think that claims of First Amendment violation are exaggerated, and that the exaggeration may be counterproductive.

That’s my point, no irony, no sarcasm, no snark. Just an observation on strategy in political discourse, offered freely for what it’s worth.

PS: Lambert, saw your follow-on comment, must run right now but I’ll be back, you make a couple of important points well worth discussing.

Bringiton, I agree with your analysis but am not sure a legalistic approach is aiming at the right target. You say yourself

To be sure, Hamas is on the list so if Gush Shalom gave money to Hamas, and you gave money to Gush Shalom, you could find yourself having a conversation with the FBI - but unless you are a substantial donor or fundraiser, probably not.

An awful lot of indeterminate, not-clearly-definable terms in there. "If" and "could" and "substantial" and "probably"....

If you're a single person, say, without a spouse who can at least take action if you suddenly get that "conversation with the FBI" and afterwards quit showing up for work and answering your phone--

--much less without private wealth (which might not help in any case given the confiscation provisions outlined in this document),

--without a lawyer on retainer who knows your situation and can act in your interests,

--or without what would be best of all, a patron of wealth, clout and access to the media who can protect you if you are Gitmoed or just plain disappeared--

are you going to take a chance on those "ifs" and "maybes" and "probablys"? I think not. Lambert may be righter than either of us: the message of "watch what you say, watch what you do" is exactly what's being conveyed here.

Maybe you can give to a particular group and maybe you can attend a demonstration and hold a sign reading "Free Palestine" or whatever, and maybe you can stand suddenly having your bank account frozen and assets seized without notice and your only recourse to fight it out in court for how many years before Bush-appointed judges and the headlines saying "Terrorist Financier Argues For 'Free Speech' Rights"...but are you really likely to take a chance on it?

Maybe it's better to stay home, shut up, quit agitating on blogs and writing LTEs, and donating to anybody at all....just until this crowd of evil clowns is out of office, that's all. Then life can be normal and we have free speech again. Yeah, maybe that would be more prudent.

Funny how sometimes an attempt at making things better just makes them worse. Once when courting I made my intended’s favorite dessert, cherries Jubilee, for her and her parents. Turned off all the lights, lit the pan to ohhs and ahhs, then hit a trivet at the wrong angle as I set it down and spilled blue and red flaming syrup all over the heirloom tablecloth. A spectacular omen we would have all been wise to have heeded.

Xan, in the paragraph you critiqued I was trying to show how improbable it would be for any one not a major player to run afoul of the law under these Executive orders. Let me remove the conditionals:

Gush Shalom is not on the list of terrorist supporting organizations. Gush Shalom does have an open dialogue with organizations that are, including Hamas, but simply talking to a terrorist organization does not constitute support or a furthering act under these Executive orders. Contributing to Gush Shalom is not a crime, and the FBI will not come knocking. NO worries there, truly.

It is intimidating when tall men with big shoulders, sunglasses, blue suit and tie and shiny black shoes start asking pointed questions. All governments seek to increase their grip on power, and intimidation is one of the tools. What strikes me here is that we on the left, and I include myself in this observation, are very skilled and sophisticated when it comes to putting external threats into proper perspective but not as able to keep an emotional distance with those domestic. In a rare moment of being accurate, Bush advised Americans to go about our business normally and not let the “terrists” intimidate us. What he didn’t appreciate is that we can take the same advice when it comes to dealing with the terrorism coming out of his administration.

We have a system of governance in this country that has worked, more or less well, for near on 220 years. Bush can assert this or that or the other, and bluster and intimidate all he wants, but the tension of power between the institutions will swing the structure back to into balance sooner or later. I will not give in to despair over the process, or the time it may take for it to play out. I hope others are able to be angry over these attempts at usurpation without becoming fearful of them.

As it happens I was just last night re-reading a saved article by Robert Kaplan for the December 1997 Atlantic Monthly (pp. 55-80) on the future of democracy. (See Kaplan aside below.) As usual, his questions are better than his answers but he does raise one valuable point and that is the tenuous, paradoxical nature of individual freedom. The tighter we clasp it, the harder we hold on to it, the greater we value it, the more likely it is to be used against us a weapon. Like life itself, which is only truly lived by those who are willing to risk its loss, freedom is only fully realized by those who are willing to exercise it to its limits and accept that sometimes, on an individual basis, it may as a result be taken away.

I am single, far from wealthy, both of my ex-spouses would fall all over themselves in hysterical I-told-him-so laughter were I hauled off by the feds for being mouthy and certainly neither would give a dime to bail me out. Nevertheless, I will not give in to the BushCo terrorists by limiting with whom I socialize, where I go, what I say or write or what ever else I choose to do within the bounds of the law. (When I knowingly break the law I try to be sneaky about it; I may be foolish but I’m not stupid.) Many people are more fearful, to be sure. My point in commenting in the first place is that adding to the atmosphere of fear by exaggerating the scope of BushCo’s authoritarianism may not be helpful. On the one hand, if fear is everywhere some people will react by becoming numb, unable to respond because it’s just too overwhelming. On the other hand some people will react as Xan suggests, by pulling back and fearing palpably where no fear is justified, simply because they read that they ought to be afraid.

My interpretation is that this series of Executive orders do not infringe on legitimate freedom of speech, any more than do libel or slander laws. I also think that asserting they do is a misreading of both intent and scope, and may be counterproductive in the greater struggle to defeat the forces of authoritarianism. If you aren’t wiring large sums of money to O. bin Laden care of the Bank of South Waziristan, you’re going to be fine.

Kaplan Note: I keep reading him because of his questions, which I find to be more often than not insightful and intellectually provocative. Thereafter he mostly falls apart with conclusions based on false and I think overly dark assumptions about the adaptability of the human psyche, but I always enjoy reading him even when I’m irritated. On the other hand he sometimes absolutely nails a topic, and his book Balkan Ghosts is one of those.

I’ve had substantial first hand experience dealing with the Serbian mindset and was completely boggled until Kaplan introduced me to the concept of “historical continuum” where events from long ago are perceived as real as those of today. The Battle of Kosovo in 1996-1999 was for the participants nothing more than a continuation of the Battle of Kosovo in 1448. Literally, in their minds, a continuation. Realizing this explained what was happening in my ex-wife’s mind when she would explode into rage over a disagreement ten years past that I had completely forgotten. In the Byzantium of her brain it was just as real as if it were happening in the present.

I strongly recommend the book as an equally useful primer for understanding the conflicts in the Middle East, same sort of psychological patterns and same sort of challenges. (PS: For those who hold out hope for peace there in our lifetime, the condition is by all appearances incurable; at least that is my personal experience.)

Lambert, coffee break is over, I’ll be back at you later.

Same players, only smarter and richer; same methods, except worse, and backed by the corrupt Bush Court.

Groundhog Day except with a death spiral instead of a circle...

No authoritarians were tortured in the writing of this post.

Like Bringiton, I too read Sarah’s post regarding the recent EO issued by Bush. After a read of it on the White House website – I wasn’t particularly alarmed. I too thought it better to save a close parsing for a time when I wasn’t as tired.

My first visit into the Mighty Corrente Building today found me with even greater respect for those who post here. All great comments and analysis. Thanks to everyone for that. I don’t know if this will measure up – but I’ll give it a shot.

After a closer read, I can see how people could interpret this EO as chilling even outlawing certain speech.

The phrase that has been pointed to is: “have committed, or pose a significant risk of committing an act or acts of violence that have the effect of . . . .”

Bringiton seems correct that the key word is “violence.” Lambert is also right when he points out that speech is an act. However, “an act” and “acts of violence” cannot be separated in that phrase. An individual “act” must also be and act of “violence” under a careful parsing. Non-violent speech clearly would not qualify for the seizure of property under the terms of this EO. Thus, at least under this EO, our speech here is still safe so long as it is not committed for the purpose of inciting violence.

Of more concern to me, is the prior phrase: “any person determined by the Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense” – to have committed, X,Y, Z.

The determination of three, possibly only one person (who consulted and could possibly ignore the potential objections of the other two) could lead to the seizure of property. Then it is upon the person from whom the property was seized to prove they did not do X,Y,Z. Seems that the initial determination is without check or balance and that the rules regarding presumptions are unconstitutionally reversed. Xan’s comment about the chilling effect and the disparity in relative power between the government and an individual comes in here.

I too am dubious of executive power grabs by dear Bush – the argument that speech is in jeopardy over this EO seems to be an overreaction.

But what do I know?

[UPDATE The far creepier, indeed ecotolasmic "emanations," instead of what I originally wrote, "instruments."]

I think that both Shane-o and bringiton are making the same very goodhearted and rationally minded mistake:

They are interpreting the text as if it were a statute. But we are dealing with a criminal regime here. The words do matter, but they matter only as counters or constructs to allow the regime to do whatever the Fuck it wants under some colorable pretext.

I'm sure there were some Prussian civil servants who were pleased because the Enabling Act drew this or that line between legality and illegality, but that and a dime would get them a cup of coffee.

As Humpty-Dumpty said: "The question is which is to be master; that's all." I don't believe it, but they do.

Another way of looking at what both Bringiton and Shane-o are saying is that yes, indeed, there's a baseline. There's something that these guys just won't do. We haven't had good luck with that theory so far, have we?

I have always thought that Bush is like Macbeth; a weak and second-rate man you'd want to have beer with, and with great gifts of language -- let's not deceive ourselves on that; we don't throw things at the radio for medicrities -- who achieved his "borrowed robes" of power by murder; in Bush's case, the murder of democratic government in Florida 2000. And now that he's cornered, we need to watch out the most:

MACBETH

How say'st thou, that Macduff denies his person
At our great bidding?

LADY MACBETH

Did you send to him, sir?

MACBETH

I hear it by the way; but I will send:
There's not a one of them but in his house
I keep a servant fee'd. I will to-morrow,
And betimes I will, to the weird sisters:
More shall they speak; for now I am bent to know,
By the worst means, the worst. For mine own good,
All causes shall give way: I am in blood
Stepp'd in so far that, should I wade no more,
Returning were as tedious as go o'er:
Strange things I have in head, that will to hand;
Which must be acted ere they may be scann'd.

LADY MACBETH

You lack the season of all natures, sleep.

MACBETH

Come, we'll to sleep. My strange and self-abuse
Is the initiate fear that wants hard use:
We are yet but young in deed.

Look out. I wonder if it's polyps, or whether they're changing his meds.

No authoritarians were tortured in the writing of this post.

My analysis was purely about the actual words in the EO. I'll make no claim that this administration will not abuse them.

The language itself is not something to be of worry - of course, its interpretation and execution is a completely different discussion.

But what do I know?

And I had been so diligently trying to stop myself from committing these sorts of errors, nothing but trouble every time. Thank you Lambert, for your gentle phrasing.

On sober reflection (can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to use that phrase) and a thorough re-reading of this thread and the blogs of the participants (which should have been done some time ago) it appears that I blundered in a clumsy sort of way into the middle of an extended, ongoing conversation. Sorry about that.

Living in a bubble of my own, I may have misunderestimated the magnitude of damage done by Bush and his masters to the single most important relationship between a people and their government; the matter of trust. Whether viewed from the right or the left, modern Presidents have all been trusted at the basic level of their intent towards the well-being of the nation. Nixon was a megalomaniacal crook, but he was also an environmentalist and adept at furthering America's interests through international diplomacy. Carter may have been awkward with the levers of power but he was also uncompromisingly committed to the elevation of our better nature. With Bush, that level of trust no longer exists.

The BushCo crew have given their allegiance to an unholy triad of other causes: the worship of Mammon, through criminal enterprises sheltered by unfettered international capitalist cabals; the furtherance of totalitarian theocracy, through fanatical Christianist domination of the bodies and private behavior and personal lives of individual citizens; and outright authoritarianism for its own sake, through fear and intimidation and lies and shameless emotional manipulation. None of them put the welfare of the nation at the top of the list but instead, as Sinclair Lewis warned, use patriotism wrapped around the cross as a scam, as means to achieving a dominionist end and nothing more.

Thus the widespread fearful response whenever BushCo speaks, however benignly, however well-intended. Six years of being lied to and deceived and brutalized and abused will do that. BushCo have so damaged the compact between the people and their government, so eradicated any shred of trust and respect, that it is perhaps their greatest crime. People are right to feel, as Sarah and Lambert and others here do, that every word dripping like venom out of this monster’s gibbering maw should be poked with a stick and viewed as dangerous and threatening, because trust is dead, trust is gone, and cannot be regained. I should have been more sensitive to and understanding of these fully justifiable fears.

With that preamble, it should be affirmed that this particular instance is one where the criminals are probably behaving benignly – unlikely, I know, but it occasionally happens. A little digging through the history of this series of Executive Orders leads to the underlying congressionally enacted statutory authorization, (found at http://www.treas.gov/offices/enforcement...)

United States Code Title 50, Chapter 35, Section 1702: Presidential Authorities, which reads in part:

“(b) Exceptions to grant of authority

“The authority granted to the President by this section does not include the authority to regulate or prohibit, directly or indirectly—

“(1) any postal, telegraphic, telephonic, or other personal communication, which does not involve a transfer of anything of value;”

However ambiguous the Executive Order may appear, the controlling statutory language is clear: the President has no authority to regulate or prohibit speech in any form. Also, impeding the funding for organizations that are trying to disrupt settlement of the Iraqi conflict, funding that puts armaments in the hands of people who are killing our troops, is actually a good thing; one small doite on the positive side of the karmic balance as opposed to the several tons Bush has dumped on the negative tray.

And as long as I’m being annoyingly nitpicky, one more thing: the document we’re discussing is not, as the title of the original post suggests, a Signing Statement. Those are statements by the President issued at the time he signs a bill into law, as a means of (traditionally) clarifying the Executive’s understanding of the law’s scope, limitations and applicability or (BushCo New Rules) explaining how he intends to evade it. Signing Statements have no defined legal authority. This document is actually an Executive Order, issued under the authority of statutory law as written by Congress. So long as the Order remains within the scope of the statute, it carries the full force of the law. Two different legal beasties.

And that, doubtless to everyone’s great relief, is all I have to say about that.

Bush will probably use a signing statement to putatively legalize everything you argue the text doesn't say right now.

[Rimshot. Howling. Sound as of forehead thudding on wall. Breaking glass.]

Er, what kind of bubble were you in?

No authoritarians were tortured in the writing of this post.

Living in a bubble of my own, I may have misunderestimated the magnitude of damage done by Bush and his masters to the single most important relationship between a people and their government; the matter of trust.

We can no longer trust, I don't think, any information coming out of this government on any subject. This is potentially disasterous. The Example do Jeer, er I mean du Jour, is this WaPo item, up for an exceedingly brief time yesterday (a Saturday, please note):

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said yesterday that it will review eight endangered species decisions that were "inappropriately influenced" by a political appointee of the Interior Department, throwing a lifeline to 18 species that scientists had deemed to be in need of protection.

Scientists, conservationists and some lawmakers welcomed the news that the agency will reconsider the actions of former deputy assistant secretary Julie A. MacDonald to limit federal protections in those eight cases, but they expressed dismay that the agency chose not to reexamine other decisions she influenced

First as a special assistant and later as deputy assistant secretary for fish, wildlife and parks, MacDonald was involved in more than 200 rulings on endangered species between 2002 and May 2007, when she resigned following an inspector general's report that found she had improperly leaked information to private organizations, bullied staff scientists and broken federal rules.

Interior's regional directors submitted a list of 11 decisions they believed were influenced by MacDonald, but three were struck off the list following further discussions with Hall.

Two of the decisions -- a ruling on a regional listing of the marbled murrelet seabird and the habitat of the bull trout -- were pulled from the list Thursday.

Hall said the last-minute deletions were made because MacDonald's impact on those decisions had been minimal or related to law or policy within her "legitimate purview" rather than scientific alterations, a distinction dismissed by critics as "arbitrary."

"Illegal policy decisions are just as bad as illegal science decisions," said Kristen Boyles, an attorney for Earthjustice, who had wanted the agency also to reconsider decisions involving the northern spotted owl and the delta smelt.

"When decisions by field officers are reversed by a political appointee, the label you put on that should not determine whether it is reevaluated," Boyles said.

Boyles also noted that the agency chose not to review MacDonald's involvement in a decision to delist the Sacramento splittail, a species of fish that lives in waters on an 80-acre farm MacDonald owns within the species' limited habitat in California's Central Valley.

This is one person in one agency, and you know the case has to be extraordinarily egregious--and somebody has, probably at great risk to their own career, kept detailed records on this bint's thumb-on-the-scales routine, good enough to go to court with, or they wouldn't be rolling back her atrocities already while Bush is still in office.

How much more data has been compromised? How about weather records? What about economic data? I mean down to the raw numbers themselves--so that when honest people take over and start the Herculean task of putting things to right, they won't even know if....how to put this? It's like the BushCo people have been aware that it's raining really hard upstream of the town they're in. But rather than deal with the situation they've just been going out every night and moving the stick that measures the river level up another few inches, so they can point at it the next day and say "See? Nothing to worry about."

Before you used to be able to take on faith that the numbers The Government gathered, be it on unemployment, or daily low temperature reports from Paducah KY, or the count of rainbow trout in Yellowstone River and tributaries, were the honest best data that could be gathered.

You could argue then about the meaning of said numbers, or whether the direction of trend lines were significant or not, or whatever. Environmentalists could the say, rainbows aren't native in the Yellowstone, they compete with the browns and brooks, they should be exterminated and the natives restocked. The tourist businesses could come back with, but people love fishing for rainbows, what the hell difference does it make, the only way to exterminate the rainbows is to kill everything and that will wipe out fishing for years and we shall be Ruint. That's a policy argument, true.

But you counted on the bedrock data to be good.

No more. Eight years is just too damn long. I fear that too many of the long-term (multi-decade) career people who in the past would have caught this stuff have been weeded out or themselves corrupted, and now we've lost the baseline we've counted on before.

These criminals will stop at nothing, but what they try to do and what they get away with may in the end turn out to be quite different. Certainly correct to keep an eye on them, to call out when they misbehave, to absolutely rage in defiance. In paraphrase of Barry Goldwater, Shrillness in the defense of liberty is not a vice!

You like quotations, here’s one for you:

Words ought to be a little wild for they are the assaults of thought on the unthinking. — John Maynard Keynes, New Statesman and Nation, 15 July 1933

But you do raise here again a point you made earlier, one I’ve been struggling to address with clarity and have not succeeded in doing so. How does a rational person best respond to and comment on the endless bizarre jingoistic machinations from the VRWC of Mammonists? Do you go after each and every one and risk being like a cat in a room full of mice, flailing around and catching none of them? Or do you pick and choose which ones are most egregious, most immediately threatening, and risk that the unattended proliferation of lesser evils will one day coalesce into something much larger and overwhelmingly vile? I don’t have a definitive answer, maybe there isn’t one, but it seems to me still that the question is worth asking.

A key component of this gang’s agenda is the strategy of committing of many, many offenses against civility and liberty and freedom, so many of them that eventually the public becomes inured, another day and another affront, too much to deal with, must get up and out of the house, fight the commute, deal with the boss, do the chores, monitor the children, walk the dog, eat some toxic processed Chinese cardboard, catch Dave’s Top Ten List and head for bed hoping the spousal unit is feeling frisky, another day, too much to do to really pay attention, damn politicians, a pox on all their houses, and so it goes.

It’s a good plan, could be very effective except for the civic rules laid down by the Founding Fathers, blessings be upon them. Just Friday another Federal court has ruled that Bush’ abrogation of constitutional rights cannot be allowed to stand, using language one might employ to instruct a particularly dim-witted second grader: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/21/us/21g...

“The court said meaningful review of the military tribunals would not be possible ‘without seeing all the evidence, any more than one can tell whether a fraction is more or less than half by looking only at the numerator and not the denominator.’ ”

Not a clean and complete victory, to be sure, but a victory never the less and one that the Supreme Court has already signaled it will view with great deference:

“In an unusual comment, the Supreme Court’s order in June said, ‘it would be of material assistance’ for the justices to receive arguments from the lawyers that take into account the appeals court ruling setting the rules for the review process.” Even this Scurrilous SCOTUS (TM) seems unable to stomach the full scope of BushCo’s arrogance.

This is not to suggest that we’re free of any further damage but I do believe we’ve turned the corner. Like all criminal enterprises, this one has over-reached and understaffed. The very acts which seem to most directly attack basic constitutional rights are in practice unenforceable. The one we’ve been talking about here, impounding funds used to support violence directed against US interests, is so broadly worded that it could be construed to capture essentially all of the charitable organizations in the entire world. Since no government can prosecute everyone, enforcement is inevitably limited to a few very large and generally slimy players; de facto trumps de jure.

The same thing can be seen with this Administration’s attempts to curtail the use of public funds to support family planning when birth control is included. The breadth of the government’s mandate places every NGO under crushing limits, to the point that none of them can actually follow the law and still continue to function. What has happened instead is that the law is honored by hat-tip but not by strict compliance, the government continues to disburse funding while pretending that the law is being enforced, while in practice nothing actually has changed. The NSC/DOD/CIA/FBI data mining programs have already yielded such a vast quantity of information that it can never possibly be processed – both the innocent and the guilty are still safe in the weeds. This is no way to run a democracy, but it doesn’t function as an effective dictatorship either.

One of the many lessons learned in years of therapy is that addressing dysfunctional people using their terms can never be productive. Dysfunctional people define words and concepts in ways that force a fit to their warped perception of reality: war is peace, tax cuts for the rich improve economic circumstances for the rest of us, criticism of George Bush undermines the troops, etc. To use their definitions and pretzel logic is to fall into a trap from which you can never recover. The only way to preserve sanity is to hold tight to rigorous logic and strict dictionary definitions. May not convince the deranged of the error of their ways, probably won’t, but bystanders may be persuaded that you make sense and the nutjobs do not and at the least you will avoid the headaches that come from trying to get your mind to wrap around a psychic junkpile.

By those lights, I find it best to sometimes let the lesser threats go by so as to not lose sight of the big ones. Other good people may feel differently. No disrespect intended.

As to my being in a bubble, we are all each of us in one of our own making; a construct that admits agreement with our own values and thinking while rejecting or at least distancing us from disagreement: the friends we chose and those whose company we reject, the books we read and the ones we pass, the blogs we read and those we do not. It is a constant struggle to keep an open mind, to stretch ourselves by seeking out encounters that conflict with our comfort. Avoidance of pain, pursuit of pleasure; only human and a huge unending challenge to oppose. We’re all in a bubble, all of the time, not just GW. It’s a process that begins when we leave childhood and true wonderment behind, a building up of an emotional and intellectual suit of armor plate by plate until unless we’re very careful we turn into one of those stubborn, bound-up old farts we swore we’d never become. (I’m paraphrasing a long-ago professor whom I should credit here, I can see his face and hear his voice but his name won’t come to me, another neural network fried.)

Have you pricked your personal bubble at least once today?

Well, I'll do it for you.

From your post - to quote:

"The only way to preserve sanity is to hold tight to rigorous logic and strict dictionary definitions.

Were I religious, I'd say, Amen.

But what do I know?

It's been a sunshiny productive day but now my carefully constructed facade of equanimity is reduced to tatters. This foul host evildoers are the spawn of Satan, it is all lies, all the time, about everything, and all the numbers have been deliberately made wrong. I have a bunch of friends in Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service, smart folks, senior careerists who only ever wanted to do right things and actually went into government as young people trying to make the world a better place. They are all of them so dispirited, so despondent, so exhausted from being angry that they are reduced to showing up for work like zombies, numbly punching the time card for another couple of years to get early retirement. Breaks my heart.

And it hasn’t just been the last six years. This process of undermining the institutions of government began under Reagan, who practiced for eight years here in California to hone the art before he went to DC and started in big time. We still have not recovered here from the damage Reagan’s policies did to our public education, the environment and public works. It will take a generation to reverse what these fools have done to the country but don’t lose hope, gentle Xan, it will happen, it will get better; our children are wiser far than we.

I’m going back to cleaning out my garage. At least the malign spirits boxed up out there can be thrown into the trash bin and the dust washed off at the end of the day.

Shane-O, if it were only as easy to do as it is to say, eh? With regards to religious words and phrasing, if they can appropriate some of our civil language we should be able to take some of theirs. Sing Alleluia, Brother, sing Alleluia; no religiosity ought be required either to affirm or to rejoice.

I'm not polishing those Louis Quinze taps in the wet bar for nothing, you know.

I used to be a lot less shrill than I am. Kept urging moderation on others. It turned out, they were right and I was wrong.

The Overton Window... is people. These days, Josh Marshall sounds like us three years ago.

No authoritarians were tortured in the writing of this post.

I don't trust him as far as I can throw him on candidates or strategery or policy, but he would be exactly kind of guy we're going to need to weed out the sleeper cells and the stay-behind agents, of which there will be many. My only concern is that he's too nice a guy.

No authoritarians were tortured in the writing of this post.

and thank you, I shall, but by your leave I'll have two drinks, an old Scottish tradition; one for myself and one for the spirits of those who have gone before. I'm not usually big on traditions but that is one I always keep.

The call for moderation may be self-reflective; I suffer from a chronic congenital neurological condition diagnosed by my dear friend, scientist and excellent physician Dr. Bob Bartlett, who characterized it as a "cerebro-vocal shunt."

Words tumble out of my mouth without benefit of the filter of social convention; it's a constant struggle to not offend people unprepared for blunt honesty. Your shrill is measured and purposeful - my shrill is the verbal equivalent of a chainsaw to the throat. Personal mantra: Must, must exercise self-restraint.

This has been a lovely and instructive discussion thread, thanks much to everyone and especially to Sarah who so cleverly started it all.

the real credit ought to go to the guys at BOR, bringiton, for noticing and posting days ago.

Just because something doesn't make the cut at Big Orange, DU or the Grey Turtleneck Castle doesn't mean it's not worth noticing and publicizing ... but you've been generous, courteous and instructive through the whole adventure.

I wish I could sustain that level of class.

are this very moment hovering over your head.

"I wish I could sustain that level of class." You have never behaved here with anything less than class, why would you say such a thing? Tsk, tsk.

Repeat after me: "I am a very classy lady." 25 times.

No more self-deprecation, y'hear? Don't make me break out the Banana Squash of Submission.

'Twasn't an apology, by the way; just a polite statement of pea-green envy....let the vegetables consider their peril: beneath the Damoclean blade above my head sits an omnivore (what's banana squash? I like gooseneck, acorn, spaghetti and zucchini, which I think are all the squashes I have met -- oh, wait: you're not suspending airborne pumpkins, are you?).

By the way, thanks for your comment at the CISM post.

Tastier than summer squash when young, sweeter once fully ripe than acorn or butternut or Hubbard to bake or steam, more complex flavor than pumpkin for pies when full grown which can be to three feet long and more, and the best keeper squash for flavor bar none as long as the skin is undamaged. Put them on dry straw or newspaper somewhere cool and they will last the winter.

You want lots of room and the giant pink variety, Cucurbita maxima. It's all in the name, baby! Link here: http://davesgarden.com/pf/showimage/120498/

You have nothing about which to be envious. The little self-depricating asides are habit, speaking here from my own experience. You do know that recovered addicts are the hardest on those around them, yes? Think of me as a sort of sprite on your shoulder, whispering in your ear: "You're fabulous, Dahling, absolutely FABULOUS!"

Squash, now ... yep, I can get behind that.

Habit? Probably. It's a defense mechanism still -- albeit one I use by nearly spinal reflex, rather than in conscious reaction, these days: I trust the contrast won't be lost on you.

Meanwhile, tell me more about banana squash. Can you, for instance, make bread with it as may be done with zucchini or pumpkins?

And would it like my zone? I live here, approximately:

Latitude: 33.56 N, Longitude: 101.88 W.

And my oh my aren’t you? Mapquest threw me there for a while, just kept putting up a blank page, finally figured out that was because at those coordinates there’s a lot of, well, ahh, no good way to say this but – a lot of blankness. One of the drawbacks of banana squash, like pumpkins, is the need for room, lots and lots of room, but for you that shouldn’t be an issue. :-)

I’ve been to Lubbock, Abilene and Midland-Odessa so could be one time or the other I’ve driven right past your place or near to it, you’ll forgive me if I didn’t stop by on the way. There’s an interesting old cemetery out to Polar which is officially, I believe, in The Middle Of Nowhere, just down the road a piece from you. A lot of good soil to work if it’s amended, pour enough water and you can grow about anything. Do you know your soil type? Any gypsum?

Squash is squash, the only limitation is the length of the growing season so no problem for you. If you’ve grown pumpkins then you know the drill. Three plants to the hill, allow about 10 feet between hills, more if you have the room. You can expect 5 -10 fruit per vine so don’t be shy about picking the later season set to eat young, steam or boil just to tender and drench in butter and fresh ground black pepper. Some people use maple syrup or brown sugar, too sweet for me. When fully mature banana squash can be 2 – 3 feet long depending on the variety, and weigh 25 - 30 pounds. I’ve heard tell of bigger. Wants lots of water. Powdery mildew can be a problem, as always.

I’ve not made bread from banana squash, don’t see why not, texture and water content are close to pumpkin. Stopped making the heavy breads when I hit my 40’s, can’t resist them and they were ruining my figure. Around me a fresh loaf of banana bread has a life expectancy of about an hour. Did I mention my lack-of-self-control issues? For a long while there it wasn’t so much a lack, exactly; it was more along the lines of a complete absence. Oh, honey, I know all about hindbrain behavior, let me tell you what.

Learning to love ourselves isn’t always straightforward, but it needs to be done. If we don’t love and respect ourselves, sure as hell neither will anyone else. One of the keys is to avoid self-criticism except when it’s truly due. Plenty of folks out there who will be happy to run us down, no sense offering them tips on how to do it. Good people are hard to find, it’s our responsibility to treat them nice – especially that wonderful lady in the mirror.

I've yet to see mention of what the July 17 EO first and formost does. It enables TPTB to grab cash and deal with the legitimacy of the grab later. Look at the impending collapse of the dollar - cash is needed to prop up Wall Street, keep us going a bit longer. The scary part of this EO is that it points to the immediacy of that collapse. Hold hands!

Also, remember what the ex-IRS Commissioner told Russo in America: From Freedom to Fascism. He proved the existence of a law requiring citizens to pay tax on their labor (called, erroneously, "income") by the fact that courts put people in prison for not doing so. Is that what we call "reverse engineering"?