-Daniel Meltzer
His Royal Highness, George I, Potentate of the Potomac, Wisest of the Wise, Accomplisher of Missions, deigned this week to inform us that the controversial Patriot Act authorizes Himself, as Supreme Commander of the Combined Combat forces of the Republic, to order any such action as His exalted personage sees fit, regardless of previously recognized laws, or even our antiquated Constitution, in order to protect the nation from the possibility of attack by any and all those seeking to undermine our glorious Democracy, Long Live the King.
George I, in the final month of the fifth year of His reign, issued His proclamation during the course of His pre-holiday audience for members of the press, assembled to grovel at His feet at the White Palace and to receive their seasonal scolding in lieu of temporarily proscribed waterboarding or fingernail removal.
The Connecticut-born Texan chastised one quivering, equivocating questioner who valiantly if vainly ventured to suggest that He might have “overstepped” His divinely received authority when He authorized the tapping of telephones and eavesdropping upon emails of any American citizen of His choosing at any time and for as long as He, in His infinite insight, sees fit, Blessings be upon His reign.
Said intercepts are, it has been revealed, being conducted by the once super-secret National Security Agency, monitors (and occasional translators, when such personnel have been available) of suspect foreign communications since the Cold War, which most assume to have ended more than a decade ago, thereby leaving many skilled agents with valuable skills and lamentably few opportunities, until recently, to practice them.
His Majesty cautioned the cowering correspondents on the carpet before Him that the Act, approved overwhelmingly by Republicans and Democrats, empowers Him to employ “all necessary force” to fight terrorism as He chooses. The hero of the defense of his adopted Lone Star State during the Viet Nam War (which thankfully was not, in fact, invaded on his watch), reprimanded the revolting rabble beneath Him that the Act affords Him license to order electronic prying, as merely another “weapon” of choice against perceived, suspected, or foul-smelling evil-doers, assigning these tactics thereby to the inventory of the available arsenal also containing the cruise missile, the Abrams tank, the F-sixteen fighter jet, the B-52 long-range bomber, depleted-uranium shells, phosphorous shells and the five-hundred pound bunker-buster bombs, so sayeth He, the King.
One quaking questioner inquired why the Supreme Commander had not merely availed His Exalted Self of the provisions of FISA, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, law of the land since 1978, with its established procedures for the arranging of wiretaps, etc. via easy authorization from a panel of wise judges specifically appointed to oblige Him whenever He perceives the need to have American citizens covertly observed in their communications. In its history, the court has rarely denied such requests, not even from those legally elected presidents who served before His judicial if questionably official elevation.
He enlightened us in His most recent weekly Sunday Sermon, however, that as a wartime Commander in Chief, He is not bound by our laws. Nor is there a clause or codicil in the Almighty Patriot Act itself stating that He may not exempt Himself from any law, whenever He may see fit to do so, so be it.
(Said Patriot Act, as we are have been enlightened by our sage Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez(selfsame author of the various and variously tortured torture authorization treatises(supersedes our more than two century old, pre-telegraph US Constitution, a parchment document, after all, and composed with quill pens.)
The Supreme Ruler thanked His audience for attending to His profound pronouncements, admonished them go forth and disseminate His wisdom, and to avoid following the example of those colleagues who had unpatriotically disclosed His latest secret stratagems, as well as to subject themselves to deserved penance and obligatory self-flagellation. He then returned to His private quarters to await further guidance from the Heavens and to don fresh raiment for his daily mountain-bike excursion around the South Lawn. Long may He reign.
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Daniel Meltzer is a journalist and playwright.
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