Executive orders on wikipedia

If even one tenth of this info is true, its still completely outrageous.

Hearsay and anonymous testimony are admissible!
Reminds me of the good old Stalinist Russia, where all you needed to forever get rid of your "annoying" neighbors, was a trip to your friendly local NKVD office.

Someone from England, please tell us we are missing something!?

Enemy combatants' accusations are getting our troops in trouble. That load of crock makes me think some of this stuff isn't so far fetched when our politicians use our brave men and women as pawns in their political games and the seamingly corrupt media is amplifying all this.

Sorry about the rant, but this is ridiculous!

So in effect the Congress has about as much chance overturning an Executive Order as agreeing to whether they would all agree to order a Pizza or Chinese takeaway.

No I don't. The Judicary in the UK has a demonstrated history of striking down law's that are considered unjust. Which is an advantage of an appointed judicary. They don't have to worry about appeasing the masses or politicians.
Also, these laws are intended for use against - for example- a diagnosed paranoid or schitzophrenic who won't accept treatment. It's a lot more humane than sectioning them.

Too many people have been murdered in the UK by people who where known to be a problem or risk/threat, but the authorities have been unable to act against.

I understand where the civil liberties groups are coming from, and such powers do admit of abuse. But, and it's a major but, you have to balance the rights of an individual against the rights and needs of all the individual's in a society. Which is why you need these powers. But you also need a check on those powers that prevent there misuse.

Re Susan

Looks like ASBOs have been around since Arthurian times.

You're right about over turning one. If it's not funded it's mighty difficult to enforce. If it's a big enough issue they could hold up the entire budget except for some emergency spending (i.e. minimal funding for critical departments).

Do National Security Executive Orders have any Congressional oversight considering these are kept top secret even from the prying eyes of the members of Congress. Could funding for these Executive Orders be provided from Black Project accounts. Apparently on 10th September 2001 the Pentagon couldn't account for $2,400,000,000,000 worth of transactions.

Yes there is oversight by the House and Senate Intelligence Committee to which the President's National Security Advisor and several other high ranking officials in the intelligence world are required to give briefings. The President cannot do anything without the eventual approval and oversight of Congress. For example, even the Presidental War Powers Act only permits the President to wage war for a short period of time before getting to approval of Congress.

The problem for Congress with the "war on terror" is that they gave the President almost blanket approval to fight the terrorists without any specific defined goal of victory which would call an end to his power to wage this war. Because there is not a well defined enemy such as in the case of WWII the President could in theory wage the war on terror indefinitely or until the Congress passed a bill repealing his power and Congress was then able to also override the President's veto of that bill (which is exactly where we seem to be headed this week although the Congress does not have the necessary votes to override the coming veto.)

As to the whole issue of Executive Orders, legally it is extremely questionable as to whether or not they are even constitutional. There is nothing in the Constitution that explicitly gives the President the power to issue executive orders and more importantly there IS a provision in the constitution that expressly reserves the power to make laws to the Congress.

The Supreme Court has the ability to spank either of the two branches. And if Shrub thinks that the current Court will rubber stamp him, he's missed comments made outside of the court by some of the Justices. The problem is is that it has to go through the steps up the ladder, and that takes time.