Bush's signing statements are very troubling, and they seem to be more and more blatant.
Lobbyists write (some of) the laws and it is thought that Cheney's man Addington writes the signing statements.
Glenn Greenwald has written about them about a dozen times this year.
We have, in effect, no legislature. We can send'em all home and save a few million.
No one will see the long comment I posted on Major Danby's "Farewell" diary from yesterday, where it was in fact a bit off-topic, so I'm expanding it a bit here.
Here are a few quotes about the presidential signing statements, from Glenn's blog:
January on Alito: "This is the issue which Democrats need to emphasize most. It is the most substantive ground for opposition, and the most pressing."
January on McCain Torture Amendment: [it is] the Administration's position that the President has the power to "waive the law's restrictions" if the President deems it in the national interest to do so.
March/April, citing the Boston Globe re the Patriot Act and other laws: "the latest in a string of high-profile instances in which Bush has cited his constitutional authority to bypass a law"
June, quoting former Reagan Justice Department official and life-long conservative Bruce Fein: "Presidential signing statements are extra-constitutional and riddled with mischief. . . I would further recommend that Congress enact a statute seeking to confer Article III standing on the House and Senate collectively to sue the President over signing statements that nullify their handiwork, . . . . . If all other avenues have proved unavailing, Congress should contemplate impeachment. . . . "
September on John Yoo's Op-Ed in the New York Times: . . .from torture and pre-emptive wars to endless invocations of presidential secrecy, the issuance of "hundreds of signing statements" declaring laws invalid, and even what Yoo calls the President's assertion of his power to "sidestep laws that invade his executive authority" (what we used to call "breaking the law").
And from Wikipedia:
In July 2006, a task force of the American Bar Association described the use of signing statements to modify the meaning of duly enacted laws as "contrary to the rule of law and our constitutional system of separation of powers".
...
Our most recent signing statement was added to the "Military Commissions Act of 2006" on the 17th of this month. Some excerpts (from comments in Major Danby's diary) show the language used in this statement and illustrates the type of language used in the hundreds of signing statements. All emphasis mine.
The executive branch shall construe sections [ ... ], which purport to make consultation with specified Members of Congress a precondition to the execution of the law, as calling for but not mandating such consultation, as is consistent with the Constitution's provisions concerning the separate powers of the Congress to legislate and the President to execute the laws.
A number of provisions in the Act call for the executive branch to furnish information to the Congress or other entities on various subjects. [ .... ] The executive branch shall construe such provisions in a manner consistent with the President's constitutional authority to withhold information the disclosure of which could impair foreign relations, the national security, the deliberative processes of the Executive, or the performance of the Executive's constitutional duties.
...
Bush has claimed, time after time, that his job is national security; it is to protect the American people.
That is not his job. He has sworn an oath to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution", not the people.
When a bill has passed both the House and the Senate, he may choose to sign it into law or he may veto it. That's it. There is no line veto. He may not sign it and take exception to parts of it. There is no (legal) provision for that.
A confrontation is in order. It is necessary. Will all the Democrats avoid anything of the sort, as nearly all of them did with Feingold's Censure Resolution? I think that activists are going to have to follow up all the way: first to avoid more horrors from the lame duck Congress and then every step starting in January.