FC: Emergency Powers and National Emergencies

[Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>]

"The President has the power to seize property, organize and control the
means of production, seize commodities, assign military forces abroad, call
reserve forces amounting to 2 1/2 million men to duty, institute martial
law, seize and control all menas of transportation, regulate all private
enterprise, restrict travel, and in a plethora of particular ways, control
the lives of all Americans...

"Most [of these laws] remain a a potential source of virtually unlimited
power for a President should he choose to activate them. It is possible
that some future President could exercise this vast authority in an attempt
to place the United States under authoritarian rule.

"While the danger of a dictatorship arising through legal means may seem
remote to us today, recent history records Hitler seizing control through
the use of the emergency powers provisions contained in the laws of the
Weimar Republic."

   --Joint Statement, Sens. Frank Church (D-ID) and Charles McMathias (R-MD)
     September 30, 1973


I came across this and the Senate special committee's 1973 report on
Emergency Powers Statutes in Time Magazine's library. Powerful stuff.

-Declan



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