"It's a challenge to the plain language of the Constitution...There is a sense that the president has taken signing statements far beyond the customary purview."
This is the understatement of the week. This isn't new. He's been raping our rights for 1 1/2 terms and most people haven't lifted a finger to stop it, nor do they realise what's happening in our government. There have been slow, subtle changes allowing someone as fatuous as Dubya to freely violate our own Constitution.
Press Secretary Tony Snow said, "There's this notion that the president is committing acts of civil disobedience, and he's not. It's important for the president at least to express reservations about the constitutionality of certain provisions."
They use this one on car lots and it's called the bait and switch. Have we become so apathetic that the White House can issue this rubbish and it mostly goes unchallenged. Why did it take the Senate this long to catch on?
The bill-signing statements say Bush reserves a right to revise, interpret or disregard measures on national security and constitutional grounds. Some 110 statements have challenged about 750 statutes passed by Congress, according to numbers combined from White House and the Senate committee. They include documents revising or disregarding parts of legislation to ban torture of detainees and to renew the Patriot Act.
Most people, including myself are too young to remember exactly what happened to allow a man named Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz to overtake Fulgencio Batista in 1959. He also calls himself President.
Defending Bush, a Justice Department lawyer said the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks had made it prudent for the president to protect his powers with signing statements more than did his predecessors.
Dictators said the same thing...they knew what was best for the country. I'm sick of 9/11 being used as a license to make our decisions for us.
The exchange came during a midterm election year in which Specter, some fellow Republicans and many Democrats are highlighting concerns about the administration's use of executive power. Specter's personal list includes Bush's warrantless domestic wiretapping program, the administration's checking of phone records and the sending of officials to hearings but saying they cannot answer lawmakers' questions on national security grounds.
It's a start but what the hell took them so long? 9/11 was nearly 5 years ago!!
The president is entitled to express his opinion...
This is true. Opinion doesn't mean putting his scrawl everything he pleases, circumventing our rights in the process.
"I don't know why the issue of presidents issuing signing statements is controversial at all."
The King said the world is flat, it must be flat. This statement is asinine. Dubya said it, I believe it, that settles it.
Other presidents have used signing statements for administrative reasons, such as instructing an agency how to put a certain law into effect. They usually are inserted quietly into the federal record.
The word quietly is disturbing. Our legs are being chewed off, oh so quietly and oh so gently.
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@ The Professor- I've lived outside this country and that's precisely the reason I'm so alarmed. The fabric of our country is unraveling at an alarming rate. I love my country and hate what's happening to it. If you lived in a beautiful mansion and a gang of thugs broke in and started smashing things and fucking your daugher, would you yell at her saying "it's a beautiful house, shut your fucking mouth"?
You obviously know a lot less than you think you do. Shove your head back up your ass where it's been.