February 01, 2007

IMPEACH BUSH


IMPEACH CHENEY


HOUSE INVESTIGATING SIGNING STATEMENTS

I hadn't heard of signing statements until the hideous administration of George W. Bush. Signing statements have been used by other presidents, but not so abusively and extensively as by Bush. Signing statements are, in essence, a statement by the president of how he interprets a law he has just signed. It appears Bush has used signing statements as a legal pretext to ignore laws he doesn't like. Rather than go through a veto fight, he signs a bill and then uses the signing statement to thumb his nose at it. This article by Charlie Savage is at www.commondreams.org:

The new chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, John Conyers Jr. of Michigan, said yesterday that he is launching an aggressive investigation into whether the Bush administration has violated any of the laws it claimed a right to ignore in presidential "signing statements."

Bush has claimed that his executive powers allow him to bypass more than 1,100 laws enacted since he took office. But administration officials insist that Bush's signing statements merely question the laws' constitutionality, and do not necessarily mean that the president also authorized his subordinates to violate them.

Conyers said the president has no power " to ignore duly enacted laws he has negotiated with Congress and signed." And he vowed to find out whether the administration has followed each law it challenged -- including laws touching on classified national security matters, such as the tactics used to interrogate suspected terrorists and the FBI's use of the Patriot Act.

"This is a constitutional issue that no self-respecting federal legislature should tolerate," Conyers said, and he added that the committee was determined to "get to the bottom of this matter, and to be blunt, we are not going to take no for an answer."