Fellow Vermont blogger, Mark Floegel, offers his views on Bush’s recent signing of the “National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2007″.

A little benignly titled document which just happens to “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.”

Outside of the blogosphere — and perhaps Keith Olbermann — I doubt anyone’s even heard of it.

Floegel writes…

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. [my emphasis]

And that, my friends, may be the real Long War ahead.