Posted on 02/03/2009 12:43:05 PM PST by history_48
by Gina L. Diorio
How would you like to know you could be carted off to a military installation at the whim of the Secretary of Homeland Security?
If that sounds ominous, it should.
But that’s what could happen under a bill proposed last month by Congressman Alcee Hastings (D-FL).
The National Emergency Centers Establishment Act (HR 645) requires the Secretary of Homeland Security to “establish not fewer than 6 national emergency centers on military installations.” And according to the bill text, the four-fold purpose of the centers will be:
This bill, introduced with (understandably) no fanfare, rings several civil-liberty alarm bells.
First, the phrase “other appropriate needs, as determined by the Secretary of Homeland Security” leaves the door wide open to every imaginable (and as-of-yet unimaginable) scenario. What constitutes an “appropriate need”? Political dissent? Under this bill, it could. (And anyone who thinks otherwise should take a moment to reflect on the use of the Constitutional “necessary and proper” clause to justify a slew of federal laws unimagined by the drafters of that founding document.)
Second, as WorldNetDaily columnist Jerome R. Corsi writes,
The bill also appears to expand the president’s emergency power, much as the executive order signed by President Bush on May 9, 2007, that, as WND reported, gave the president the authority to declare an emergency and take over the direction of all federal, state, local, territorial and tribal governments without even consulting Congress.
The executive order to which Corsi refers is the National Security and Homeland Security and Presidential Directive which, according to WND,
… establishes under the office of the president a new national continuity coordinator whose job is to make plans for "National Essential Functions" of all federal, state, local, territorial and tribal governments, as well as private sector organizations to continue functioning under the president's directives in the event of a national emergency.
"Catastrophic emergency" is loosely defined as "any incident, regardless of location, that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the U.S. population, infrastructure, environment, economy, or government functions."
Additionally, by making no mention of Congress, the directive, as noted by Corsi, “appears to negate any a [sic] requirement that the president submit to Congress a determination that a national emergency exists, suggesting instead that the powers of the executive order can be implemented without any congressional approval or oversight.”
Any attempt – regardless of the possible well-meaning motivations behind it – to vest such sweeping authority in one or even a few individuals is a dangerous affront to civil liberties.
All it would take to tip the scale from providing “emergency relief” to effecting a complete suspension of habeas corpus is the whim of just one or, at most, a few, and under an allowance such as this, the distance between good intentions and despotism becomes short, indeed.
Rep. Hastings’ bill now rests in the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure and the Committee on Armed Services, where it should rightfully die a swift death.
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Gina L. Diorio is a full-time freelance writer. Please visit her website at www.LibertyWritingSolutions.com.
Actually, they could have opened these for Katrina folks the week prior to the hurricane, and no one would have shown up.
I think anyone in the government who thinks that people will be cooperative and head to a “camp”....is mistaken. This will simply waste hundreds of millions in tents, sleeping bags, and Sterno. They will eventually decide that some kind of chemical applied to the tents will make them unlivable and they will have to be buried in some salt flats in Nevada.
Hitler rises from the ashes of history.
Looks like Obama’s bed-buddy William Ayers has finally figured out a “final solution” to the conundrum: “How do we get rid of the 25 million or so Capitalists that will dissent during our Marxist revolution?”
To absolutely ruin most people these days, all you would have to do is incarcerate them in one of these camps for about 90 days.
Their job would be gone. Their credit would be gone. Their home could be considered to have been abandoned.
You wouldn’t even have to convict them of anything. If they didn’t have substantial funds in their bank, or stocks to fall back on, they would be toast.
If you had already demonstrated that you couldn’t even follow through with your own taxes, what reason would folks have to think you would have good judgment about who should and shouldn’t be incarcerated on a whim?
Good Lord, we are becoming as paranoid as the Rockwellites and Birchers..
Come on ya’ll As much as folks want to scare the crap out of the right...isn’t the idea of death camps a little far fetched?
And yes...I’ve read the Ayers drivel...
Of course we should be vigilent..but not parnoid.
Ironic how all the things the DUmmies dreamed up as happening under President Bush, look more likely under Hussein.
Why hasn’t Ayers assumed room temperature?
I will resist with every means available to me the deportation of me and mine to these camps. Period.
ping
“Hitler rises from the ashes of history.”
Oh, please. We’ve had emergency camps for decades under FEMA. No one ever goes to them. Why? Because it’s not necessary. Most of the refugees from Katrina, for instance, stayed in private homes. And if it ever came to a situation where private homes weren’t enough, you better believe government homes wouldn’t be enough.
Let’s say they decided to use the army to deliberately round up large segments of the population for whatever reason. This plan would not be enough. They’d need bigger camps. Plus, unlike European Jewry, we have guns and are willing to use them.
Speaking of Ayers, I know that he had similar plans under his projected commie revolutionary government decades ago. Is there any connection between Hastings and Ayers?
OK, if I grant you that everything you wrote is true, then why do we have them?
And yes...I’ve read the Ayers drivel...
Of course we should be vigilent..but not parnoid.
The same things were said in the USA about Hitler all the way into 1944. Assuming it can't happen here is one of the surest ways to assure that it does.
I thought that WAS what it meant...
...but then my German is so rusty as to be practically non-existent.
I don’t know but I do know we need an Orkin man.
“The bill also appears to expand the president’s emergency power, much as the executive order signed by President Bush on May 9, 2007, that, as WND reported, gave the president the authority to declare an emergency and take over the direction of all federal, state, local, territorial and tribal governments without even consulting Congress.”
Is this a big deal? Everyone already expects the executive to act in urgent situations. The president can wage war for 90 days without Congressional approval. Also, it seems to have been the popular oipinion that Bush should have run roughshod over state government before the levees even broke in New Orleans.
Besides, are we to expect Congress to protect our liberties over the whims of the president? What world do you live in?
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