The Bush administration has just put out an administrative order which:

The Bush administration announced a new tool Tuesday to freeze financial assets of those who want to destabilize Iraq.

President Bush unveiled a new executive order that allows the administration to block bank accounts and any other financial assets that might be found in this country belonging to people, companies or groups that the United States deems are working to threaten stability in Iraq.

Bush cited the "unusual and extraordinary threat" to national security and foreign policy of the United States "posed by acts of violence threatening the peace and stability of Iraq and undermining efforts to promote economic reconstruction and political reform in Iraq and to provide humanitarian assistance to the Iraqi people."...

...The administration already has tools to clamp down financially on people, companies and groups that seek to bankroll terrorist activities or help funds specific terror groups, such as al-Qaeda and Hezbollah. The United States also has financial sanctions against countries accused of fostering terrorism, such as Iran.

Questions for any legal beagles or amateur beagles:

Legal beagles - this executive order allowing the Pres to freeze any accounts by anyone (so far as I can tell) the administration figures is making the Iraq war worse....(article below)

1) is this legal?

2) If so, how so (under what law, or power)?

3) If not, is this another case of executive overrach?

Bonus question: am I alone in being disturbed by penalties being constantly applied without people having their day in court?

Observation: this sort of thing is the main reason countries like Venezuela, Iran and Russia are stopping selling their oil in dollars and are removing their assets from the US. (And is one reason why many individuals are doing the same). That isn't even close to good for the US. In fact it is very, very, very bad.

Schecter's place discusses, nut 'graph:

According to this, legally, even members of Congress can be cut off financially if they "undermine" (however the Homeland Decider decides to define "undermine") "efforts to promote economic reconstruction and political reform". If the King says you have messed with what he wants to do with Iraq, his majesty and his royal Secretaries of Treasury, State, and Defense can do away with you.

UPDATED BELOW

According to a couple lawyers I discussed this with - probably legal and maybe constitional. Uses the same authority as Executive Order 13224, the one used to crack down on terrorist finances passed right after 9/11. Congress has given him pretty much the authority he needs.

The reasoning on due process is that they're only taking your money, not locking you up and that the President is due a lot of leeway on secret information that courts can't know about. This is similiar to closing an unsanitary restaurant, or other emergency orders meant to safeguard the public - fix it now, go to court later.

Of course, in most of those cases, you get to see the evidence and even sue for damages if you were wrongfully harmed. Still... Bush's order may well be legal.

This appears to be a place where knowing a little law and a little civics is dangerous.

I always thought that people accused of a crime couldn't be punished without

1) being charged
2) having their day in court in a reasonably timely manner
3) being able to face their accuser and see the evidence agaisnt them.
4) without a jury of their peers ruling against them in significant cases (Having all your money frozen seems significant)

I recognize that these sorts of laws aren't new (I used to help enforce them at my old employer, a large American financial institution) but they seem to me really fundamentally against due process.

And yet, somehow, they're all over the place (especially in the case of laws used ostensibly against drug offenders)

Am I the only one bothered by this?

So, to recap, what I'm getting from the lawyers is it's probably perfectly legal for Bush to seize anyone's property, on effectively his own word (Secretaries who stand against Bush don't last, as we know) with no effective repeal to the court system.

The difference between this and a King, I assume, is that America elects her President every 4 years and theoretically Congress could do something.

And this isn't really a partisan issue - this stuff started long before Bush.