One of the odd things about quitting blogging last week (I really meant it!) is that my traffic roughly tripled and, even more oddly, it has stayed up despite no new posts. At the same time, new, interesting people have started to reach out on e-mail, which makes it much more fun. Thanks y’all. You can put the lighters away. There will be at least one encore. The theme tonight is centralizing everything.

I don’t care who is in the White House, this is one of the most spectacularly audacious totalitarian power grabs I’ve ever seen, rivaling even this one from two months ago.

A pair of bills introduced in the U.S. Senate would grant the White House sweeping new powers to access private online data, regulate the cybersecurity industry and even shut down Internet traffic during a declared “cyber emergency.”

Senate bills No. 773 and 778, introduced by Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.V., are both part of what’s being called the Cybersecurity Act of 2009, which would create a new Office of the National Cybersecurity Advisor, reportable directly to the president…

the White House, through the national cybersecurity advisor, shall have the authority to disconnect “critical infrastructure” networks from the Internet – including private citizens’ banks and health records… The working copy of the bill, however, does not define what constitutes a cybersecurity emergency, and apparently leaves the question to the discretion of the president.

With one of the better candidates for anti-Christ in recent memory occupying the office at the moment, it’s both less surprising and more disturbing. Leaving that aside for a moment though, it’s not hard to imagine someone with Narcissistic Personality Disorder feeling the heat of an uppity, tea-party populace.

One morning he wakes up, sees that big red Internet switch on the wall (if Al Gore invented it, I can turn it off, he might say to himself). And it’s just too much… it’s too easy. Why take all the abuse anymore? It’s not pleasant. It’s not right. Besides, he might reason, it will take the SCOTUS months if not years to undo.

So he has some bright junior staffer draft a memo outlining in vague terms how under current crisis conditions, written and verbal attacks on the person, policies and performance of the president (always use passive voice) constitute a threat to the nation and therefore a ‘cybersecurity emergency’.

After all, who would have the power to oppose him if/when things got to that point? And how would they we organize if the Internet were ‘temporarily‘ or selectively shut off? Or what if, suddenly, a bunch of folks on an undesirables list couldn’t get access to their own medical or banking records? When your kid can’t get penicillin and you can’t pay the bills, it’s pretty easy, as a writer, to change your tone very quickly. Think Nixon but with a bigger clue, far broader ambitions and a lot more power to carry them out.

In a semi-related vein (authoritarianism), the Anchoress is onto something in crying ‘foul’ over prohibitions on religious activities in drafts of the Alice-in-Wonderland-like, simultaneously mandatory and ‘volunteer’ national service corps (which still reminds me of the GDR’s chilling Jugenweihe program… on the days it doesn’t remind me of the Hitler Youth, that is). She writes:

Do recall, friends, that we heard Bush was a “nazi” and a “fascist” for the last 8 years. Do recall that. Learn what “projection” means, if you don’t already know.

The prohibitions may be less draconian than they at first appeared, but I would not advocate a reduction in vigilance just yet. Context can make a great deal of difference in how such language is interpreted and carried out and what its effects come to be. A great deal.

I also don’t see why we shouldn’t hold fast to the out-of-fashion idea that the First Amendment means exactly what it says: (“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…”) and not some bureaucratically twisted ‘yes, but’ version ground down by decades of secularists re-writing history.

Finally, does it strike anyone else as both stupid and ominous that BHO is seriously considreing Kazakhstan’s offer to act as a centralized repository for nuclear materials?

The administration is also working to develop an international nuclear-fuel bank, potentially hosted by Kazakhstan, that fledgling nuclear-power states could tap.

So if I’m getting this right (and I recommend everyone read the rest of the article), we would be granting to some international body that this administration would invent, the power to funnel potentially all of the world’s nuclear materials to a desperately backwards authoritarian Muslim state next door to Russia and Iran that overlaps with the Biblical Magog, which in turn is destined to go to war against Israel (and God himself) under the control of Satan and then be consigned forever to the abyss?

Am I getting this right, more or less?

Yes, I know it is complex, nuanced and that parts of the idea stretch well back into the Bush administration but again, context matters. A lot.

“Rules must be binding. Violations must be punished. Words must mean something,” Mr. Obama told the crowd…

Speaking at Prague’s Castle Square, Mr. Obama told the audience his administration was committed “to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.”

“We have to insist: ‘Yes, we can,’” he said, reprising a campaign theme recognizable to a crowd a continent away from his election victory.

The phrase is recognizable in heaven too. I understand that their sound recording and analysis equipment is absolutely first-rate.  

Is anyone else finding it more and more obvious who this man is? Is anyone getting the sense that he’s becoming bolder in signaling his identity, preparing for a coming-out party that is going to be as dramatic as it is unpleasant? Along with all of the other attributes I’ve catalogued here over the last several months, calling for superficial world peace based on getting rid of deterence rather than the despots who need detering plays straight into apocalyptic prophecy.

Time is short, folks. If you haven’t decided who you worship, now would be a really good time to do so. (For one thing, you can blend into the crowds this week. For another, there are really only two choices. It’s actually pretty simple.) Think carefully about your answer. You may have to live with it for a very very long time.