The excerpt seems to omit the "standard step" of eliminating the Legislature, which has been accomplished quite effectively by the Administration's assumption of "emergency powers" that allow the Administration to create laws independent of the Legislature.

In the normal course of things, a President would veto legislation with which he/she doesn't agree, and it would be returned to the Legislature where the choice would be to accept the veto or attempt to override it.

Herr Bush has refused to veto anything, but simply signs all bills with appended "signing notes" that essentially say that he refuses to implement or enforce anything with which he disagrees, including to refuse recognition of anything that limits his personal authority. His "signing notes," so far as I can tell, are unpublished, and are inaccessible to the public.

(I'm unable to fathom why the press has not sought them out, or has been unable to find them, and has made no visible attempt to explain them to us - but they're a complete blank for me.)

[- yeah, sure, it amazes me.]

The use of "military courts" is particularly troubling, since the Administration (i.e. Bush) gets to write the "rules" for implementing laws written by the Legislature. Bush and his Administration have claimed that the laws don't matter (because he has "emergency powers") and a major revision of the UCMJ "published rules" as the "Manual For Courts Martial"^** has been released, but it's incomprehensible in any available form - and "unexplained" by any publicly available source I can find.

^** The Manuals for Courts Martial (MCM) is a ~700 page BOOK (link offers a download of a .pdf, 56MB), and the "changes" are mostly contained in Executive Order EO13387 (2005). Individual users are expected to annotate (tip-in) changes.

Among the apparent changes, a "general court martial" for a capital offense previously required a judge and a minimum of 5 court members. A change now allows "or the judge alone when authorized by ...." The "authorizing clause is elsewhere, and leads to other citations (also elsewhere) [in spaghetti code that would make an amateur BASIC programmer extremely proud].

Protests in Congress against the Patriot Act "search and surveillance" activities have been "quieted" by the promise that warrants will be obtained from the "secret court." This gives no assurance that's particlarly comforting, since the court consists of individual judges appointed by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, who was installed by our Führer, presumedly for his doctrinal agreement with "our leader." NO ONE ELSE PARTICIPATES in the selection of judges. The names of the court members are SECRET. Terms are short enough that any "uncooperative" judge can easily be rotated out and replaced by a more agreeable judge. NO REPORT OF DECISIONS is required of this Court - to Congress or to the public.

(I feel so very safe.)

John