Bush Ignores Laws He Signs, Vexing Congress

President Has Issued 750 Statements That He May Revise or Disregard Measures.

WASHINGTON (June 27) -- The White House on Tuesday defended President Bush's prolific use of bill signing statements, saying There's this notion that the president is committing acts of civil disobedience, and he's not, said Bush's press secretary Tony Snow, speaking at the White House. It's important for the president at least to express reservations about the constitutionality of certain provisions.

Snow spoke as Senate Judiciary Committe Chairman Arlen Specter opened hearings on Bush's use of bill signing statements saying he reserves the right to revise, interpret or disregard a measure on national security and consitutional grounds. Such statements have accompanied some 750 statutes passed by Congress -- including a ban on the torture of detainees and the renewal of the Patriot Act.

There is a sense that the president has taken signing statements far beyond the customary purview, Specter, R-Pa., said.

It's a challenge to the plain language of the Constitution, he added. I'm interested to hear from the administration just what research they've done to lead them to the conclusion that they can cherry-pick.

A Justice Department lawyer defended Bush's statements.

Even if there is modest increase, let me just suggest that it be viewed in light of current events and Congress' response to those events, said Justice Department lawyer Michelle Boardman. The significance of legislation affecting national security has increased markedly since Sept. 11..

Congress has been more active, the president has been more active, she added. The separation of powers is working when we have this kind of dispute.

Specter's hearing is about more than the statements. He's been compiling a list of White House practices he bluntly says could amount to abuse of executive power -- from warrantless domestic wiretapping program to sending officials to hearings who refuse to answer lawmakers' questions.

But the session also concerns countering any influence Bush's signing statements may have on court decisions regarding the new laws. Courts can be expected to look to the legislature for intent, not the executive, said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas., a former state judge.

There's less here than meets the eye, Cornyn said. The president is entitled to express his opinion. It's the courts that determine what the law is.

But Specter and his allies maintain that Bush is doing an end-run around the veto process. In his presidency's sixth year, Bush has yet to issue a single veto that could be overridden with a two-thirds majority in each house.

The president is not required to (veto), Boardman said.

Of course he's not if he signs the bill, Specter snapped back.

Instead, Bush has issued hundreds of signing statements invoking his right to interpret or ignore laws on everything from whistleblower protections to how Congress oversees the Patriot Act.

It means that the administration does not feel bound to enforce many new laws which Congress has passed, said David Golove, a New York University law professor who specializes in executive power issues. This raises profound rule of law concerns. Do we have a functioning code of federal laws?

• Bush Ignores Laws He Signs, Vexing Congress - LVMT

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and conducts illegal PHYSICAL searches of not just suspected terrorists (i.e. any American who disagrees with his policies), but breaks into the homes of the ATTORNEYS for these suspects, as well.

If you have any fondness for the Constitution, this might chill your bones a bit.

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2006/03/17.html#a7564

All you Obama crucifiers had better quickly figure out a way to blame this on Obama!  LOL.

http://www.knowthelies.com/?q=node/55

...this is the SECOND time he snookered Congress:  First with his Chicken Little rush to hurry up and go to war with Iraq (which most of us were stupid enough to buy hook, line and sinker, myself included).

Now the economic "crisis" that required us to hurry up and give more money to reward the Wall Street crooks who have already stolen from us WITH THE EXPRESS CONDITION that there be no oversight, that we simply hand the money over to former Wall Street guru Paulson (wink wink) and let him and Bush figure out (wink wink) with no questions asked regarding the identity of the recipients.  (Apparently, they are changing the rules as they go along, as we saw today regarding where the money is going.)

If you REALLY want to get your blood boiling, read the following two articles.  Seems everyone who is a decision-maker in the administration regarding this whole fiasco is a former employee of one of the failed companies.

Bush has always held America and Americans in contempt.  I now hold Congress in contempt and place the blame squarely on them for being stupid enough to believe Bush again.

Fed loans to AIG make Paulson's previous employer rich

http://www.business-standard.com/india/storypage.php?autono=335924

---

And just last week, the Federal Reserve hired a BEAR STEARNS reject.

administration has blocked any kind of transparency and refuses to be acountable to the American citizens who are funding the Wall Street giant giveaway.

The General Accounting Office says the Wall Street bailout isn't being policed properly: 

WASHINGTON — Lawmakers want the Treasury to do a better job of insisting that banking institutions sharing in the $700 billion bailout comply with limits Congress imposed on executive salaries and use the money for its intended purposes.

In the first comprehensive review of the rescue package, the Government Accountability Office said Tuesday that the Treasury Department has no mechanisms to ensure that banking institutions limit their top executives' pay and comply with other restrictions.

"The GAO's discouraging report makes clear that the Treasury Department's implementation of the (rescue plan) is insufficiently transparent and is not accountable to American taxpayers," said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.

The auditors acknowledged that the program, created Oct. 3 to help stabilize a rapidly faltering banking system, was less than 60 days old and has been adjusting to an evolving mission.

But auditors recommended that Treasury work with government bank regulators to determine whether the activities of financial institutions that receive the money are meeting their purpose.

In a response to the GAO, Neel Kashkari, who heads the department's Office of Financial Stability, said the agency was developing its own compliance program and indicated that it disagreed with the need to work with regulators.

Continued at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/12/03/the-bailout-isnt-being-po_n_147982.html

P.S.  Neel Kashkari, formerly of Goldman Sachs (a/k/a the fox guarding the hen house), just recently got his job.  His bio:

http://www.ustreas.gov/organization/bios/kashkari-e.html

Bush could bypass new torture ban Waiver right is reserved By Charlie Savage, Globe Staff  |  January 4, 2006 WASHINGTON -- When President Bush last week signed the bill outlawing the torture of detainees, he quietly reserved the right to bypass the law under his powers as commander in chief. After approving the bill last Friday, Bush issued a ''signing statement -- an official document in which a president lays out his interpretation of a new law -- declaring that he will view the interrogation limits in the context of his broader powers to protect national security. This means Bush believes he can waive the restrictions, the White House and legal specialists said. ''The executive branch shall construe [the law] in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the President . . . as Commander in Chief, Bush wrote, adding that this approach ''will assist in achieving the shared objective of the Congress and the President . . . of protecting the American people from further terrorist attacks. Some legal specialists said yesterday that the president's signing statement, which was posted on the White House website but had gone unnoticed over the New Year's weekend, raises serious questions about whether he intends to follow the law. A senior administration official, who spoke to a Globe reporter about the statement on condition of anonymity because he is not an official spokesman, said the president intended to reserve the right to use harsher methods in special situations involving national security. ''We are not going to ignore this law, the official said, noting that Bush, when signing laws, routinely issues signing statements saying he will construe them consistent with his own constitutional authority. ''We consider it a valid statute. We consider ourselves bound by the prohibition on cruel, unusual, and degrading treatment. But, the official said, a situation could arise in which Bush may have to waive the law's restrictions to carry out his responsibilities to protect national security. He cited as an example a ''ticking time bomb scenario, in which a detainee is believed to have information that could prevent a planned terrorist attack. ''Of course the president has the obligation to follow this law, [but] he also has the obligation to defend and protect the country as the commander in chief, and he will have to square those two responsibilities in each case, the official added. ''We are not expecting that those two responsibilities will come into conflict, but it's possible that they will. David Golove, a New York University law professor who specializes in executive power issues, said that the signing statement means that Bush believes he can still authorize harsh interrogation tactics when he sees fit. ''The signing statement is saying 'I will only comply with this law when I want to, and if something arises in the war on terrorism where I think it's important to torture or engage in cruel, inhuman, and degrading conduct, I have the authority to do so and nothing in this law is going to stop me,' he said. ''They don't want to come out and say it directly because it doesn't sound very nice, but it's unmistakable to anyone who has been following what's going on. Golove and other legal specialists compared the signing statement to Bush's decision, revealed last month, to bypass a 1978 law forbidding domestic wiretapping without a warrant. Bush authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans' international phone calls and e-mails without a court order starting after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The president and his aides argued that the Constitution gives the commander in chief the authority to bypass the 1978 law when necessary to protect national security. They also argued that Congress implicitly endorsed that power when it authorized the use of force against the perpetrators of the attacks. Legal academics and human rights organizations said Bush's signing statement and his stance on the wiretapping law are part of a larger agenda that claims exclusive control of war-related matters for the executive branch and holds that any involvement by Congress or the courts should be minimal. Vice President Dick Cheney recently told reporters, ''I believe in a strong, robust executive authority, and I think that the world we live in demands it. . . . I would argue that the actions that we've taken are totally appropriate and consistent with the constitutional authority of the president. Since the 2001 attacks, the administration has also asserted the power to bypass domestic and international laws in deciding how to detain prisoners captured in the Afghanistan war. It also has claimed the power to hold any US citizen Bush designates an ''enemy combatant without charges or access to an attorney. And in 2002, the administration drafted a secret legal memo holding that Bush could authorize interrogators to violate antitorture laws when necessary to protect national security. After the memo was leaked to the press, the administration eliminated the language from a subsequent version, but it never repudiated the idea that Bush could authorize officials to ignore a law. The issue heated up again in January 2005. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales disclosed during his confirmation hearing that the administration believed that antitorture laws and treaties did not restrict interrogators at overseas prisons because the Constitution does not apply abroad. In response, Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, filed an amendment to a Defense Department bill explicitly saying that that the cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment of detainees in US custody is illegal regardless of where they are held. McCain's office did not return calls seeking comment yesterday. The White House tried hard to kill the McCain amendment. Cheney lobbied Congress to exempt the CIA from any interrogation limits, and Bush threatened to veto the bill, arguing that the executive branch has exclusive authority over war policy. But after veto-proof majorities in both houses of Congress approved it, Bush called a press conference with McCain, praised the measure, and said he would accept it. Legal specialists said the president's signing statement called into question his comments at the press conference. ''The whole point of the McCain Amendment was to close every loophole, said Marty Lederman, a Georgetown University law professor who served in the Justice Department from 1997 to 2002. ''The president has re-opened the loophole by asserting the constitutional authority to act in violation of the statute where it would assist in the war on terrorism. Elisa Massimino, Washington director for Human Rights Watch, called Bush's signing statement an ''in-your-face affront to both McCain and to Congress. ''The basic civics lesson that there are three co-equal branches of government that provide checks and balances on each other is being fundamentally rejected by this executive branch, she said. ''Congress is trying to flex its muscle to provide those checks [on detainee abuse], and it's being told through the signing statement that it's impotent. It's quite a radical view.

© Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
 

I know Gov. Napolitano wanted to secure Arizona borders years ago.  She was Attorney General back then and US attorney.  She went to congress and fought for border control several times, but was ignored by Clinton.  Finally Bush came into office and he signed (article below) Border Fence Act. 

As for Obama, well he picked Gov. Napolitano to be in his office. 

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6388548

Who do they think they are, gathering and exercising their first amendment rights like that?  And  all those signs came from republican central planning, didn't they?  Maybe there could have been heavier attendance, but many of the potential supporters actually have jobs. 

The MMM was organized by Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam.  It would have been soooooo politically incorrect before, during and after the million man march to characterize all the participants as nuts, sexist racist kooks with a single hateful agenda, trouble makers, disgruntled black men just looking to cause problems. 

Yet the reverse is excactly how tea party participants were portrayed, which is okey-dokey with most people. 

In the dish it out/take it department, the left has pretty a sweet deal because they can say the most prejudiced, outrageous things about the right and get by with it.  But when the right criticizes the left it is always claimed that we are selfish, racist, sexist, homophobic bigots.  It's not about your race, your gender, or your lifestyle.  It's about socialism versus capitalism, okay? 

Yes, this country does have laws that protect citizens from being murdered.

A "citizen" is defined someone who "is born or naturalized in the United States."

Fetuses, embryos, etc. aren't born or naturalized.  The issue of when life begins is akin to the "chicken/egg" question and will never be answered to the satisfaction of everyone.  It relies mostly on religious views, and one's religious views shouldn't be forced on someone else who may not believe the same.

Again, I believe in minding my own business and NOT judging someone who may have or has had an abortion because it's none of my business.

If you don't believe in abortion, then I guess the simplest answer is:  Don't have one.

A president, vice president and most/all members of congress and the senate get to go to safe places in case of attack or threat of attack. It's the way the government can keep going in case of an emergency.

Don't post something you know nothing about. Come to this board with FACTS. That's what this board is supposed to be about.

I found this article on Oprah's website and thought this excerpt was powerful on the anti-child abuse/molestation movement.  The underlined areas are links, please help out with this as you can.

*This is a full circle moment for me. For me to have been raped at 9 years old … this is so big and so gratifying that I now get to put people behind bars who did to me what they've been doing to other children. This is it. And so I am going to spend my own resources, and I am going to work with law enforcement, and I'm going to change, with your help, the laws in this country state by state by state by state.

We are not going to be a country that talks the talk about how we care about children, and then we let these people back out on the street. It's Joseph Duncan all over again. We have got to let Shasta Groene and all the others be the last children. Let their lives not have been in vain. Let's stand up, and change the laws.

Take a look at these accused child molester profiles, and see if you can be the next person to put a fugitive behind bars.*