Tuesday, May 22, 2007

A story idea

Here's an idea for a story. Yes, it's been done several times, but bare with me on this one...

Imagine a country at war, a country that is slowly losing its civil liberties, a country run by a man (or group) more interested in his own political career and his own religious agenda. Now imagine that this man is slowly losing his power to a disgruntled electorate. What can he do? There has to be some way for him to grab more power. Here's an idea, what if the man implemented a policy where he could take control of the government if there is some kind of emergency...say a natural disaster or a terrorist attack?

Sounds like a pretty good idea for a story to me...or maybe it sounds like something the White House is actually planning to implement. Read here for more information.

In the document, it basically says that in the event of a disaster, the President would be able to take control of the government, basically to make sure that things continue to run the way they're supposed to, and to make sure that the Constitution is upheld. But I have to ask, when has this President ever put the Constitution ahead of his own personal agenda?

I wonder what's going to happen now that I've linked to this document and ranted about it in this blog...do I end up on some watch list? If I'm not already on one...

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Maybe tour on that No fly list J.

As for me, I know nothing, I see, nothing :-)

Anonymous said...

Thoreau said something to this effect, but he was talking about taking a walk. If you're not on your own, you have to wait around until everybody else is ready. That can be disastrous when you're talking about the government's response to an attack or a massive hurricane like Katrina.

I think the writers of the constitution knew the pros and cons. They tried to solve this problem by placing one person, the president, as chief executive with checks and balances by congress and the surpreme court. From the looks of things, over the past 7 years we've had either a very strong executive or very weak congress and court. Perhaps the pendulum will swing back to restore the balance.

In any case, Thoreau said a number of other things that also apply: Government executes the will of the people, and the people get the government they deserve.

Cellophane Queen said...

J? J who? I don't know anybody by that name.

Anonymous said...

I checked TSA no-fly-list. You will be happy to know, that the feds don't know about you ... yet.

J Alan Erwine said...

Is it really possible to check the no-fly list?

Anonymous said...

"Is it really possible to check the no-fly list?"

If it wasn't, how could anybody know whether you were on it or not?

Robert