Yesterday the New York Daily News reported the latest outrage from the Crawford Crawdad - Bush’s signing statement to a postal reform bill asserting his power to open mail without a warrant “under emergency conditions” (presumably he gets to decide when conditions are emergent).
So once again he issues a signing statement (of dubious legal authority) and nose-thumbs the Constitutional guarantee of due process (in violation of his oath of office).
Where is the outrage? Have we become so inured to Bush’s “if the president says it’s okay, it’s okay” attitude that we just roll our eyes, mutter under our breath, then go about our business?
Where is the outrage? Will no one in a position to hold him to account do so?
Where is the outrage?
[Side comment: it took two weeks for anyone in the media to notice this signing statement. Has Bush started declaring his signing statements classified documents???]
President is a nutcase. he is anti American. The fundimental rights that made us what we are are nothing to him. He does what he wants. I hope congress and the senate can handcuff this jerk.
I found my outrage, but really nowhere to vent it except the Dope. I agree with Revtim; I think so many of us are suffering from outrage fatigue. So many things this guy does are blatantly outrageous and ridiculous that I think it’s almost expected that he’ll constantly come up with bullshit like this.
And that has worried me to no end, and will continue to worry me until the country is free of him when he finally leaves office. Sheesh!
So, do these people not realize that there will come a day when they will not be the ones in power? At some point, someone else will be the wielding that unlimited power they’re creaming their pants over.
Oh, they will “care”. They will hoot and holler and the castrated media will cover it and cover it and everybody will get all up in arms about it and it’ll be an issue and then the Democrats will be demonized for doing the same thing the Repubs are doing and then they’ll get voted out of office and the cycle will start over again.
Plenty of people are outraged, but as long as the media doesn’t care and doesn’t run this at the top of their broadcasts with a slick graphic and handy catch phrase, it is irrelevant.
My local paper had a blurb about it on page, oh, seven or so.
I’m pretty outraged, in a low key way – if that’s possible. As a lawyer interested in Constitutional law, I find Bush’s use of “signing statements” to be deeply troubling. They are clearly an attempt by him to arrogate to the Presidency the right to determine the Constitutionality of laws, since he uses them to assert his right to decline to follow laws he personally deems unconstitutional. This is an abdication of his duty as President to faithfullly execute the laws duly passed by Congress and to leave questions of Constitutional interpretation to the courts.
BUT it is also, at the end of the day, mostly just mouth-noises. He is “reserving the right” to do something he hasn’t actually done – crucially, I have to add the rider “so far as we know” – which is to disregard the law as written. He is declaring “I don’t have to follow it if I don’t want to” but until he actually doesn’t follow it, he hasn’t really done anything. So the question becomes whether the mere assertion of power, without any concrete exercise of that power, is actually damaging.
The American Bar Association concluded that it is. Here is the ABA Taskforce report on the issue. (PDF file.) But the taskforce also concluded that Congress itself could pass a law limiting the President’s ability to use (misuse) signing statements as he currently is doing. The President asserts they can’t do that, that he can make any old statement he wants, so long as he signs the law – but the passage of an actual law, then not followed by the President, would give us what we don’t actually have right now – a concrete controversy that could be laid before the courts for determination. That’s what I hope happens and, now that the Dems are in control of Congress, it may. But until they move to stop the President from usurping their authority, I don’t see that much can be done about it.
Why has there not risen a cabinet question, a long fucking time ago?
Hell, in Norway, portable gas plants became a fucking cabinet question that felled a government, in 00/01. How this shit has come so far without felling this government is absolutely ridiculous.
Cabinet question? If this is similar to the PM Question Time that the British Parliament does, we don’t have that. The President is never even required to appear before Congress for anything. Traditionally, he does at least once a year, to deliver the State of the Union address, but legally he could just send them all a copy of the speech and never even come near the Capitol.
And the idea of any member of this administration willingly answering questions before Congress is probably the funniest thing I’ve ever heard. God willing, there will be subpeonas to test just how strong their resolve to be silent actually is.
The Cabinet is not elected. They are not members of Congress. The administration cannot be removed from office on a vote of no confidence, only by impeachment, and only a single official for each impeachment. We can’t get rid of Bush, Cheney and Rice in one fell swoop even if we could put together the 2/3 vote it would require. Each would have to be impeached separately.
The American government doesn’t “fall” the way Parliamentary governments do. The American President is elected to a term of four years and, other that resignation, impeachment, or assassination, there is no way to remove him from office until his term is done. His right and ability to serve is in no way dependent on the good will or “confidence” of the parliament (in the U.S., the Congress). As jayjay noted, he doesn’t even have to go talk to them if he doesn’t want to. IIRC, the last president to even testify before Congress was Gerald Ford, who served thirty years ago.
For Domestic First Class Mail, no circumstances at all, as far as I’m aware. Was this an actual question you wanted answered, or is this going to be another “gotcha ya” that is supposed to cause us non-lawyer types to genuflect?
By the way, are you referring to anyone opening the mail, or Bush and Co.'s ability to open it, which is what we’re pitting? Postal inspectors can open it for several reasons, but none of those reasons are equivalent to “The President told me to.”
