Okay, so... who missed me? Anyone? Oh. Really. Nobody? Honestly? Well, then. Moving on...
It's time for an all-new Scotty Show with Tony Snow, and this one is shorter than usual because, frankly, Tony Snow didn't know a hell of a lot this time around. The man just seemed to know jack shit in response to every question. "I don't know... I don't have that with me... ask me tomorrow... I'll try to get back with you on that..."
Well, either way, Tony, get the fuck with it because your vacation is over. Someone in Customs/Immigration let me back in the country, so my eyes are back on you. And as usual...
Press comments and questions are italicized for her pleasure.
Scotty's Snow's bullshit is thick and bold, like in real life.
Bullshit detector comments are in plain text, which I'm sure signifies something suitably profound.
The Ayatollah's comments -- a snub, do you consider them? I mean, a month ago the President offers direct talks.
No. No. The President has never offered direct talks.
This is an outrage! I want to know who is going around spreading those kinds of lies.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, you say? In a BBC news story headlined US Offers Direct Talks With Iran? Dated, as the reporter stated, one month ago? Well, that could mean anything, really.
Again, keep in mind what I've said many times, which is you're going to get a number of voices from Iran, as the Iranian government and factions within the Iranian government try to figure out how they are going to proceed with not only the United States offer, but also the EU3, a package of incentives if the Iranians agree to renounce uranium enrichment and reprocessing activities.
Well, if the United States didn't offer to talk to Iran, then what offer from the United States are those crazy Iranians debating, exactly?
"President Ahmedinejad, the United States will not talk to you directly, but I have it on good authority that if you suspend nuclear activities, they are willing to offer you some discounted season passes to Busch Gardens, a sheet of coupons featuring two-for-one McRib and McGriddle sandwiches, a free small soft-serve cone at DQ, and $2 off a Regular Wash or $5 off an Ultimate Wash at Paul's Auto Wash in Jackson, Michigan. Feel free to debate this offer amongst yourselves."
At this point we've heard varying responses from different quarters.
They have varied anywhere from "this is a propaganda move" to "absolutely not" to "no fucking way" to "Death to America!"
Tony, this is not just another faction. I mean, Ayatollah Khamenei is the final arbiter of state issues. He can't be sort of dismissed as one in the chorus.
He's not dismissed, but if you take a look, the comments are ambiguous.
Really? Let's go to the tape.
Ayatollah Khamenei: "Negotiations with the United States would have no benefit for us... We do not negotiate with anybody on achieving and exploiting nuclear technology."
But Mister Ayatollah! Could you please tell us what you really think and stop being so damned ambiguous?
He's saying that they don't need negotiations with the U.S. over nuclear programs -- it's, if nothing else, it's disappointing and discouraging, isn't it?
No, because we don't have an official response from the Iranian government. We will wait to act and to respond and to give you a state of mind when we have a proper, official response through the government.
Right... we don't have an official response from the Iranian government yet -- all we have is a very ambiguous middle finger from the man responsible for the official response from the Iranian government.
Tony, regarding the disclosure last week of the SWIFT monitoring program, I understand the theoretical argument that this impedes the ability to conduct intelligence, but does the White House know for a fact that it's demonstrably changed and lessened the ability --
We took this up yesterday, which is, you're not going to be able to assess definitively within a day. But I think what you're likely to have is negative confirmation in the sense people change their behavior. This is a program that had worked, that had worked -- not only had been successful in intercepting terrorist funding and foiling terrorist plots and saving lives. And The New York Times story itself said as much. It's not as if terrorists are going to say, oops, got to stop doing that. You're not likely to get a lot of intel traffic. But on the other hand, I can imagine that over a period of time you're going to see some sort of patterns emerge.
Somewhere in the mountains between Afghanistan and Pakistan...
OSAMA: Despite the amazing military successes of the Great Devil in Iraq (our world headquarters), I am ready to conduct a new plot against the American devil-dogs.
LIEUTENANT: Awesome, sir... we shall rain fire upon them. What would you like our people to do?
OSAMA: Based on the American pig-dogs' Homeland Security funding, they believe my ideal terror target is a place like Omaha, Nebraska. And they are right. Unleash our martyrs upon the Walmart Supercenter on 99th Street immediately!
LIEUTENANT: Your genius knows no bounds, praise Allah! However, raining fire upon a Walmart Supercenter could cost many of the American dollars. We shall require significant funding.
OSAMA: This is not a problem, my friend, as I shall log onto my Wells Fargo account and transfer the money to our people from my dialup AOL account. I shall then call them using my AT&T long-distance service to confirm that they have received the money and are prepared to meet the 73 virgins I have reserved for them on this glorious day.
LIEUTENANT: Sir, have you not been reading the New York Times? Certainly we cannot do as you say, for I have learned that the American pig-dogs will be monitoring our phones, bank transactions, and internet activities!
OSAMA: Praise Allah that I have now learned of this! Otherwise, the American devil-dogs would have disrupted our terrorism plot and possibly even discovered my location! Then terrorism would have ended forever!
LIEUTENANT: Praise be to Allah and the New York Times! Without them, we may have never known the Americans would think of such a thing!
I hope you're happy, New York Times, you traitors.
Coming back on Iran, you said that you were getting positive statements from Iran. Can you tell us where they're coming from? Is it the Iranian regime --
I suppose what's happened is you've had different spokesmen with the Iranian regime who have given different shadings, sometimes appearing to sort of welcome, or at least be willing to think about some way of trying to reach out to the EU3. In other cases, you've had things that sounded categorical. So that's really what I meant; it's the approach. I've also cautioned repeatedly don't read too much into any of that. It is people publicly trying to figure out what their position is going to be, and in some cases, they're speaking to their publics and they're making their arguments. And what we expect is for the inner councils of the Iranian government -- which even though there's a lot of public statements, the internal activities of that government still remain fairly opaque, it's not a transparent government -- at some point, they are going to have to decide what their position is going to be, and they will have to transmit it through the proper channels.
Okay, well, when you say "positive statements", you have to use the correct definition:
Pos·i·tive state·ment (pŏz'ĭ-tĭv stāt'mənt)
n. pl.
Any statement from the Iranian government that does not involve the United States fucking itself with a broken florescent light bulb.
Are any of those representatives speaking for Ahmadinejad that the United States is aware of?
Any of them speaking for him? I think he's speaking for himself. I don't know that he's deputized anybody to speak for him.
I mean, come on... President Ahmadinejad's a real man's man, who can speak for himself instead of sending some deputy out to talk to the press.... hey, wait a minute!
I talked yesterday with somebody from the NSC about the telephone records being handed over -- by the telephone companies to the NSA. And they wouldn't confirm or deny the existence of the program. Now, as far as the SWIFT financial records issue that was reported in The New York Times, you seem to have confirmed the existence of that program by the way that you've been talking from the podium. So if that's the case, and the telephone records program was written about also in The New York Times and in USA Today, why not just go ahead and either confirm or deny the existence of this program and just lay the whole thing to rest?
Because we are neither going to confirm, nor deny. We are going to be perfectly circular with you here. But having neither confirmed, nor denied before, we're not going to do it. In the particular case with The New York Times, there was a concerted effort to lay before the newspaper the full facts and to try to make the argument that while it might make a good story, it's bad in terms of national security. As far as the other program, we just have never confirmed or denied the details.
We will not confirm or deny the existence of the program wherein we spy on American's phone calls except to say that USA Today are traitors for revealing that program (which we will not confirm exists), and that we don't actually listen to or record the phone calls in this program (which we will not confirm the existence of), and that it's really just the government analyzing a social network based on phone numbers, duration of calls, frequency of calls, and things like that (assuming that the program exists, which we won't confirm or deny).
In the line-item veto meeting the President had, did the President extract any commitment, or Frist give any commitment to moving it to the floor --
Well, no, I mean it was discussed that they want it to happen, but there was no, hey, Frist, are you going to do this for me? Really, it was a general conversation about the need for Congress and the President to work together to find ways to curb the natural impulse and temptation for members of Congress to be able to slip in spending that doesn't necessarily meet the standard of being a national priority.
Are you suggesting that it's possible that members of Congress might focus on things that are not national priorities?
And one of the ways to do that is a line-item veto where -- that also meets constitutional muster. What has happened in this particular case, we've put together a measure in which the President can look at a budget, he can look at line items; then he resubmits those to Congress for an up or down vote that should meet the Supreme Court's guidelines on this. That, in and of itself, highlighting those kinds of spending items, should in some ways serve to discourage people who might come up with spending that otherwise would seem less than absolutely necessary for the nation's safety and security and for the ongoing operations of the federal government. So they conducted it at that level, and the President obviously made it clear that he thinks this is a priority.
What will the Senate find when it completes its detailed look at the President's use of the signing statement?
I think what they're going to find is that the President has done the same thing that his predecessors have. As a matter of fact -- let me see, just give me a moment here -- I want to get the first name correct. Michelle Boardman, who is Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Counsel -- I'd direct you to her testimony today before Senator Specter's committee, because she really does lay out not only the history of the use of these signing statements, usually to make points of constitutional interest, or constitutional import, but also to draw parallels with previous presidencies and the extreme similarity, for instance, between signing statements and the justifications and the circumstances under which the signing statements were issued between, say, Presidents Clinton and Bush when it came to things like national security and the presentment clause, and so on.
So I think what they're going to find is this is really sort of business as usual, and that the volume of signing statements is really not that all out of line compared with previous administrations. Somehow people are now taking more notice.
Hmmmm... I wonder why that could be? Maybe it's because Bush has issued approximately 750 signing statements while his father, by comparison, issued 147 signing statements, Reagan issued 105, and Clinton issued 80.
Last thing on that. I'm confused on how he used them. Does he use them just to make constitutional points, or is he directing interpretation of the law?
Well, in some -- no, what you're -- you're making constitutional points about how you execute -- how you can execute the law in keeping with the Constitution. I've got to say, some of the signing statements are -- this is a really great law, I'm really happy about it. I mean, some of the signing statements are also, in effect, "atta boys." But when it comes to constitutional statements, they do generally fall into a series of categories. And you will forgive me if I go back to Michelle's testimony. But she talks about not only national security concerns, but specific constitutional provisions -- the most common being the recommendations clauses, the presentment clauses, and the appointment clauses -- and also, to interpret specific holdings of the Supreme Court like the Chadha decision, which I just referred to before, with regard to the use of the legislative veto. So that's how he uses them.
They are basically de facto line-item vetoes.
One other quick follow. When he makes these points, are these things he lost on and didn't get the Congress to do --
There will be -- no, there will be times when Congress may, in fact, have done things that it hadn't considered. And also Presidents -- you go back and you can read some of the things Walter Dellinger wrote when he was working for President Clinton because he faced the same problem and actually wrote fairly extensively about it, and said, you are not under an obligation every time you see one of these constitutional concerns to veto a bill. Sometimes, what you can do is to make your expressed concern known within the context of a signing statement and find ways to work with Congress, which sometimes will, unknowingly, have gotten itself into this sort of situation.
And therefore, you can solve it that way. This way, you don't have -- you don't veto a bill, you don't create the kind of animosity or tension that you might normally have in the context of a veto, over something that is relatively minor and can be solved with a combination of a signing statement and cooperation with Congress to fulfill the will of Congress, and at the same time, abide by the constitutional injunctions that apply to the President.
There are 465 representatives and 100 senators in the United States Congress, and all of those people cannot be expected to read and understand the Constitution of the United States. Luckily for all of them, President George W. Bush is something of a constitutional scholar, so he can sort these kinds of things out when the bills are forwarded to him to be signed.
And you know this part of the Constitution?
Every bill which shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate, shall, before it become a law, be presented to the President of the United States; if he approve he shall sign it, but if not he shall return it, with his objections to that House in which it shall have originated, who shall enter the objections at large on their journal, and proceed to reconsider it. If after such reconsideration two thirds of that House shall agree to pass the bill, it shall be sent, together with the objections, to the other House, by which it shall likewise be reconsidered, and if approved by two thirds of that House, it shall become a law.
Look... whose opinion about the Constitution are you going to respect more?
- George W. Bush, Maximum Constitutional Scholar; or
- The ragtag bunch of rebels and miscreants who wrote it
George W. Bush knows there's a better way. Why go to all the trouble of vetoing a bill when you can just ignore it by attaching a signing statement?
It's not the same thing as a line-item veto?
No, absolutely not.
Jeez, liberal media! Where do you come up with these wacky ideas all the time? (Is it the blast emails and faxes from Supreme Leader Markos?)
Regardless, these signing statements are not at all the same thing as a line-item veto. For example, with a line item veto, the president says, "I am signing this bill into law, except for these parts of it which I disagree with." But with a signing statement, the president says, "I am signing this bill into law, except for these parts of it which I disagree with."
Errr... well, okay, that's one similarity... but I defy you to find any others!
Why did not a spokesperson from the White House, nor the Attorney General, nor the Deputy Attorney General, nor anybody more senior than the Deputy Assistant Attorney General from the Office of Legal Counsel appear before the committee?
Because she's the specialist in that.
Because the secretary to the Deputy Assistant Department of Agriculture cafeteria lunch lady's shoe shiner's babysitter came down with the flu at the last minute.
So the Attorney General is not a specialist --
The Attorney General is out of the country right now.
It might play well in some parts of the country, but deporting Attorney General Gonzales was just NOT COOL.
What about the Deputy Attorney General?
Victoria, are you really -- are you seriously quibbling that you are concerned because the person who specializes in this doesn't have enough -- doesn't have the proper title to satisfy you to testify before Congress?
Yeah, Victory, holy fucking shit. Honestly, who cares about the title of the person that the White House sends to waste time, lie, obfuscate, and patronize the committee? What matters is that they got the job done.
Tony, there are reports that Homeland Security is going to be delaying the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative on the northern border. Is the President aware of this? Is the White House aware that what was signed into law may, in fact, now be delayed because of lack of progress?
You know, the President may be aware of it, but I'm not. That will have to wait. Ask me tomorrow and I can get you an answer.
Setting a timetable on this matter will only embolden the Canadians.
Can you get him out here?
He's getting ready for a jog.
Really? A jog? Doesn't the president of the United States of America have more important things to be spending his time on? Like... oh, I don't know... clearing this brush on the White House lawn?
Hmmm?
Both the Associated Press and WorldNet Daily report that U.S. Immigration and Customs at Palm Beach International Airport detained Rush Limbaugh for three hours on Monday because they found in his searched luggage one bottle of Viagra, which fact was revealed to the world. And my question: Does the President believe this federal treatment of Limbaugh was fair, and did he believe Rush was wrong to make references to both Bob Dole and Bill Clinton and to announce, "I was worried about the next election," as quoted by The Washington Post?
I think the President has had very little to say about it, but it was an amusing question and I thank you for it.
If Rush Limbaugh wants to fly to the Dominican Republic carrying Viagra that is prescribed in his doctor's name for the purpose of making his flaccid cock hard enough to fuck under-aged Latina sex slaves, this White House feels he has every right to do that without everyone making a big fuss about it.
In a separate, totally unrelated matter, if you are gay or lesbian and want to become legally and spiritually joined as a sign of your faithful commitment to one another, forsaking all others -- then you are an abomination and a threat to marriage and the American family.
Any questions?