123 - Zampolit

Fascism didn't work for Bush so now he's going to try communism.

From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch editorial page:

In the bad old days of the Soviet Union, it was the practice of the Communist government to embed a political officer with every military unit and aboard every Soviet ship. The duty of a zampolit, an abbreviation of the Russian phrase "deputy of the commander for political work," was to operate independently from the military chain of command, enforcing party discipline.

How odd that now, some 15 years after the fall of the Soviet Union, the concept of the political officer has returned — and in Washington, D.C., of all places. President George W. Bush last month signed an executive order creating regulatory policy officers within every federal agency. These regulatory zampoliti will be political appointees operating outside the civil service chain of command, charged with making sure that the agencies don't stray from the president's policies.

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