National Defense Resources Preparedness: Wearing the Duncecap

Don't you hate it when you rediscover people from your past on Facebook and they turn out to be closeminded rightwing Fox-watchers? Don't you hate it even more when it's someone like, say, a teacher, and you discover that they don't read, but absorb Fox spew as gospel?

 Yep, happened to me today. A former teacher inserted himself into a Facebook conversation about the "National Defense Resources Preparedness" Executive Order signed by the President on Friday, and the teacher was clueless but opinionated (the two are never mutually exclusive with certain rightwingers). I hardly knew what to say... "Dear Mr. X: Please go finish the reading assignment before you try to participate in the discussion with the rest of the class." ?

 At any rate, frustration abounds everywhere this weekend as the righties go nutsies over this Executive Order, failing to notice that its basis has been in place for over half a century, and that it has been (again) essentially unchanged in its latest incarnation. A common complaint accompanying the sudden discovery by many that this EO exists is that the President can now seize property and conscript labor at his whim (including in peacetime): in fact, we've been living under that language for years, and though the peacetime part is true, the President's power is actually balanced by the Cabinet in this particular EO, so the whim part is rightwing Obama-fear. And further failing to notice in their horrified outrage over the (insert incendiary phrase of choice here, selecting from the following: fiat; Communist cabal; plot for dictatorship; Socialist thingie) Obama pulled off when signing this EO that Congress (let's call them government branch number one) passed the Defense Production Act in 1950, laying the groundwork for this Executive Order that President Obama, like W. Bush and Clinton before him, has signed.

And failing to find out that the Supremes (let's call them government branch number

two) have made rulings that cover what the breadth of a president's executive power is (with a key one, in fact, being made regarding Harry Truman's overreach of executive power in an Executive Order not long after Congress passed the Defense Production Act), and that it could likely be said that Congress has been implicitly approving the basis of this EO for decades.

 And failing to notice that the power vested in the Commander in Chief (let's go ahead and call him government branch number three) by Article II of the Constitution is, in any case, well balanced by the Cabinet in this particular Executive Order.

 Why let the facts get in the way of a good head of horrified steam occasioned by blind hatred of a President, though? (Hmmm.... because one is willing to believe this sketchy president will seize any opportunity to seize power in some kind of Executive Order coup?) Why read legislation from those boring, dusty old National Archives when one can crib from Fox News? Why go to the library when one can copy test answers from one's neighbor? But wait... Mr. X, you frowned on that back in the day, saying we needed to learn to think for ourselves. Sorry, but you need to wear the class duncecap today. Oh, and go read the assignment: Executive Order -- National Defense Resources Preparedness; National Archives; and Congress for Kids: [Constitution]: The Three Branches of Government.