Protection from a Cranky President

Alright, i've had a little more time to review this "Military Commissions Act of 2006" that was passed so quietly that "you could hear the yawn across the country as people turned to Dancing With the Stars."

I could probably break down each part and the reasons why it's unconstitutional and completely frightening but that would be 35,000 words and nobody would read it. So here is the scariest part:

Section 948a of title 10 of the United States Code, as added by the Act, defines an "unlawful enemy combatant" as:
`(i) a person who has engaged in hostilities or who has purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States or its co-belligerents who is not a lawful enemy combatant (including a person who is part of the Taliban, al Qaeda, or associated forces); or
`(ii) a person who, before, on, or after the date of the enactment of the Military Commissions Act of 2006, has been determined to be an unlawful enemy combatant by a Combatant Status Review Tribunal or another competent tribunal established under the authority of the President or the Secretary of Defense.

The second section is the important one. This basically says that the President or Secretary of State (two of the most mentally unstable dudes in the country) can assign a tribunal to declare anyone an unlawful enemy combatant. On it's face, this seems like an extension of the Patriot Act and a semi-useful tool against terror suspects. Look just a bit under the surface however and this pretty much allows Bush or Rumsfeld to detain, without counsel, anyone they choose.
The writers of the constitution set in that document the idea that they would protect the country's citizens from a cranky leader. That is, the king couldn't just pass rules or put people in jail because he felt like it. That's why the U.S. has things like Habeas Corpus, due process, probable cause, Miranda warnings, the right to a lawyer and speedy trials by a jury of your peers. This new law, passed with minimal fanfare, takes all that away from us. If Bush has a tummy-ache or Rumsfeld goes completely psychotic, that they can appoint a tribunal of their own stooges and put anyone in jail at any time, for any reason and for any length of time, and without declaring them guilty of any specific crime.
Imagine this if you will: It's 2008 and Bush and his buddies decide that too many of the things they set out to accomplish when they were elected in 2000 haven't been accomplished (denying civil rights, killing women and children, ruling the world, lining their pockets with oil money, etc.). So they decide they're just going to stay in office. The people would revolt, right? (Let's hope anyway.) But any revolution or outcry this would cause could be absolutely quashed because the president and the secretary of state have the power to declare any citizen, any revolutionary, any member of any other political party as an enemy combatant and throw them in jail. The army and the police, if they valued their jobs, would have to comply. Overnight this country could become a police state with thousands, if not millions, in jail for made-up crimes, never to see a trial. They'd be political prisoners.
Now that may be an extreme example, and even my radical mind can't imagine this actually happening, but to me it's absolutely petrifying that there is even the slightest possibility. Sure, it could happen even if this law hadn't been passed but now we've basically given the fuckers PERMISSION TO DO IT! It wouldn't be absolutely legal.
What we've done is pass a law that removes the checks and balances on the executive branch. And we've torn down the things that were meant to protect us against a cranky president. If Bush is in a bad mood (he's out of fruit roll-ups, he can't beat a level on Mario Bros., etc.) and ends up reading this blog, i could be meeting some new friends in Guantanamo by Friday and he would be well within his rights to do it. Let's just hope they put me on the top of the naked-guy torture pyramid...
Good luck to us all.