What all has Bush done in office you ask...

[FourScore]

What all has Bush done in office you ask...
DATE: 9/11/2007

•I attacked and took over 2 countries.


•I spent the U.S. surplus and bankrupted the US Treasury.


•I shattered the record for the biggest annual deficit in history (not easy!).


•I set an economic record for the most personal bankruptcies filed in any 12 month period.


•I set all-time record for the biggest drop in the history of the stock market.


•In my first year in office I set the all-time record for most days on vacation by any president in US history (tough to beat my dad's, but I did).


•After taking the entire month of August off for vacation, I presided over the worst security failure in US history.


•I set the record for most campaign fund raising trips by any president in US history.


SNIP


RECORDS AND REFERENCES:

• I have at least one conviction for drunk driving in Maine

(Texas driving record has been erased and is not available).


•I was AWOL from the National Guard and deserted the military during time of war.


•I refuse to take a drug test or even answer any questions about drug use.


•All records of my tenure as governor of Texas have been spirited away to my fathers library, sealed in secrecy and unavailable for public view.


•All records of any SEC investigations into my insider trading or bankrupt companies are sealed in secrecy and unavailable for public view.


•All minutes of meetings of any public corporation for which I served on the board are sealed in secrecy and unavailable for public view.

•Any records or minutes from meetings I (or my VP) attended regarding public energy policy are sealed in secrecy and unavailable for public review.

http://www.funnycracker.com/index.cfm?target=features.cfm&view=details&id=353

[stillcool]

1. another achievement...

- How many statements has George W. Bush signed?

Two types of "metrics" have surfaced in news articles and web and media comments. One approach is to count the documents identified as "signing statements" that President Bush has issued when signing Congressional enactments. The second is to count the number of laws challenged in those documents. Neither approach is inherently superior; rather, accuracy is contextual and depends on the topic being discussed.

As a result, the recent trend has been to report: (a) the number of signing statement documents; (b) the number of bills (or public laws) affected; and (c) the number of provisions of law affected within the bills or public laws subjected to signing statements. The recently-issued GAO report illustrates this approach. When examining President Bush's signing statements for 2006 appropriations acts, the GAO was careful to note that Congress enacted 12 appropriations bills in fiscal year 2006, President Bush issued signing statements for 11 of those acts, and the signing statements challenged 160 provisions within those 11 acts.

These two most common counts (number of documents and number of affected provisons) should not be confused with attempts to analyze the content, character, or purpose of signing statements.

b. Counting the Number of Laws Challenged in Signing Statements

Most people count each statutory or non-codified provision of law affected by a single signing statement document as a separate statement. Under this metric, a single document that challenges 40 provisons of law is counted as 40 signing statements. When comparing the records of different administrations, this has proven to be a more refined and useful metric than merely counting documents.

In early 2006, Charlie Savage, of the Boston Globe, and Christopher Kelley, Ph.D, a political scientist at the University of Miami, examined the signing statement documents existing at that time and found challenges to about 750 Congressional enactments within those documents. For instance, Professor Kelley has found challenges to about 50 laws in a single bill signing statement (the statement for the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2004). By Professor Kelley's more recent count (February 1, 2007), the Bush signing statements challenge about 1,149 laws contained in 150 bills.

Most media and web sources have failed to update their numbers since the early-2006 Boston Globe article, and few distinguish between the signing statement documents and the number of laws challenged. Therefore, reports of 750 signing statements are very common. At this point, it is a bit more accurate to say that 151 signing statements challenge over 1,140 provisions in about 150 federal bills.
http://www.coherentbabble.com/signingstatements/FAQs.htm#3.%20%20How%20many%20has%20George%20W.%20Bush%20signed

Bush challenges hundreds of laws
President cites powers of his office
By Charlie Savage, Globe Staff | April 30, 2006
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2006/04/30/bush_challenges_hundreds_of_laws/
-Many of the laws Bush said he can bypass -- including the torture ban -- involve the military.
-On at least four occasions while Bush has been president, Congress has passed laws forbidding US troops from engaging in combat in Colombia, where the US military is advising the government in its struggle against narcotics-funded Marxist rebels.
After signing each bill, Bush declared in his signing statement that he did not have to obey any of the Colombia restrictions because he is commander in chief.

Bush has also said he can bypass laws requiring him to tell Congress before diverting money from an authorized program in order to start a secret operation, such as the ''black sites" where suspected terrorists are secretly imprisoned.

Congress has also twice passed laws forbidding the military from using intelligence that was not ''lawfully collected," including any information on Americans that was gathered in violation of the Fourth Amendment's protections against unreasonable searches.

Congress first passed this provision in August 2004, when Bush's warrantless domestic spying program was still a secret, and passed it again after the program's existence was disclosed in December 2005.

On both occasions, Bush declared in signing statements that only he, as commander in chief, could decide whether such intelligence can be used by the military.
------------------------
-Under Meese's direction in 1986, a young Justice Department lawyer named Samuel A. Alito Jr. wrote a strategy memo about signing statements. It came to light in late 2005, after Bush named Alito to the Supreme Court.

American Bar Association chides Bush on bypassing laws
ABA group cites limits to power

Boston Globe | July 24, 2006
By Charlie Savage
http://www.infowars.com/articles/ps/aba_chides_bush_bypass_laws.htm
-Bush has used these so-called signing statements to challenge more than 750 laws that have been enacted since he took office, more than all previous presidents combined.