We now know a Congressional bill’s name often has little to do with its content. Often, there’s an inverse relationship between a bill’s name and its intended effect. The Patriot Act and the Help America Vote Act are two recent examples. Fraudulent as those bills were, at least their passage attracted some attention and well-read citizens had a chance of knowing what they were really about. Sometimes we’re not so lucky.

On October 17th, George Bush signed the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2007. As the name implies, the bill – for the most part – deals with appropriating funds for the armed services. But that’s not all.

When the bill was in conference committee – the body tasked with resolving differences between versions of legislation passed by the House and Senate – a rider was added which would give the president the power to declare martial law. A rider is an addition or amendment to a law. Riders were originally intended as a method to fix technical problems with bills. Like everything else in Washington, they have become subject to outrageous abuse of late. This is the most outrageous abuse I’ve heard of yet.

This rider would modify two laws on the books – the Insurrection Act of 1807 and the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878. Those two laws limit the ability of the president to use military forces within the borders of the United States.

Traditionally, National Guard units have been under the command of state governors. Once known as militias, they were very independent in the 19th century, with some units moving in and out of the Civil War as individual states saw fit to press their soldiers into service.

According to the bill signed two weeks ago, Mr. Bush and future presidents will have the authority to deploy troops as a police force during a natural disaster, epidemic, serious public health emergency, terrorist attack, or other condition, when the president determines that the authorities of the state are incapable of maintaining public order.

That all sounds reasonable, right? Who wouldn’t want the Guard called out during a hurricane or flood to fulfill its traditional role of rescuing stranded citizens and shoring up levees? The systems works very well, so well that it’s not broken and doesn’t need fixing. Does George Bush expect a sudden, specific epidemic to wipe out governors and lieutenant governors across the country, rendering all 100 of them incapable of calling out the Guard to calm panic in the streets?

Maybe we should be concerned about that phrase concerning “other condition, when the president determines that the authorities of the state are incapable of maintaining public order.” What “other condition”? A Congressional investigation of the Bush administration’s bungled war in Iraq? Is it significant Mr. Bush signed this document into law two weeks before elections that are widely predicted to take the legislative branch of government away from his party and give it to his opponents? Is this just paranoid thinking or is it within the same realm of outlandishness as the installation of a president who lost the election in 2000 and was helped into the Oval Office by a series of manipulations of the vote count in a state where his brother was governor?

Let’s put paranoid thinking and conspiracy theories aside for the moment and reflect on how this development is the latest maneuver by the Bush White House and its Congressional allies to advance the “unitary executive” theory of government, in which power is usurped from the legislative and judicial branches of government and vested in the person of the president.

It’s paranoid delusion to expect Mr. Bush to put tanks in the street next Wednesday, after the Democrats have taken over one or both houses of Congress. It’s not paranoid to think Mr. Bush, the Republicans and the corporate forces that control them are playing a very long, patient game. They’ll be willing to wait through a few cycles of Democratic control of Congress and another four or eight years of a Democratic administration, if needs be. (If it’s a Hillary Clinton administration and if it’s anything like Bill’s, corporations will find an ally rather than a foe.)

The nearly-unnoticed rider on the Defense Authorization Act falls into the same category as the national identification card, warrantless wiretapping, suspension of habeas corpus and the declaration of citizens to be “enemy combatants” based on secret evidence. It’s another miserable step on the road to a totalitarian state.

People who love America – patriots – have been feeling good this week, anticipating that a Democratic Congress will at last yank the leash on George W. Bush. If and when it happens, such a shift will be cause for celebration, but we’ll wake to a sober morning after and realize it will take years, if not decades to undo all the damage that’s been done.

© Mark Floegel, 2006