Signing Statement Watch - Bush's Signing Statement Dictatorship

[ck4829]

President Bush has once again decreed that his personal pen is the highest law of the land. In a statement issued on October 4, 2006, he announced that he would ignore many provisions of the Homeland Security appropriations act he signed earlier in the day. His action vivifies that the rule of law now means little more than the enforcement of the secret thoughts of the commander in chief.

Bush's postsigning statement declared that he would interpret many sections of the new law "in a manner consistent with the president's constitutional authority to supervise the unitary executive branch." In plain English, this means that many of the limits that Congress imposed on Bush's power-and that he accepted when he took the money Congress appropriated-are null and void. Why? Because the president says so.

The new law declared that only the Homeland Security Department's privacy officer could alter or delay the department's mandatory report on how its actions and policies affected Americans' privacy. Congress included this safeguard because of the Bush administration's long record of intruding into Americans' lives-from the Total Information Awareness system, to vacuuming up information on airline passengers, to stockpiling phone records of millions of citizens.

After he signed the bill, Bush announced that he is effectively entitled to edit the report as he pleases. But his "right to edit" means that he is entitled to delete information and thereby prevent Congress from learning of how the feds continue to shred privacy.

http://www.louisianaweekly.com/weekly/news/articlegate.pl?20061016d

[jimshoes]

1. Fuck it, if he don't have to obey the law

then neither do I. I'll just sign a statement saying so. I can think of fifty that I have a problem with right off the bat.
No dictatorships in America.