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11.07 "Religulous" Disappoints
11.05 Oliver Stone's "W.": Not with a bang but a whimper
Ref. : Letters to the editor
11.14 The Illusion of Change: An Open Letter to President-Elect Obama
11.14 Targeting Hugo Chavez
11.05 Targeting Aristide in Exile
10.28 The Washington Post Undercounts Iraq Deaths
10.26 America’s Buddy-Buddy Campaign Press Corps
10.22 More Than a Two-Person Race
10.20 Top Troubling Tropes of Campaign '08
11.19 Robert Gates: As Bad as Rumsfeld?
11.17 Obama Risks Clinton-Era Mistakes
11.17 Predictable Disaster of George W. Bush
11.13 Louella Gets an Economics Lesson
11.13 The Danger of Keeping Robert Gates
11.11 Obama: Beware the Lessons of '93
11.10 Obama Mania
11.09 Can the Republicans Change?
11.09 Pundits and Quantoids: Assessing Blame for Losing
11.07 President-Elect Obama and Getting the Change We Deserve
11.07 We Have Hope, But Real Change in the U.S. Represents an Immense Task
11.06 E-Voting Machines Used in Disputed Franken, Coleman Race Failed Tests
11.06 Let us shed tears of gratitude for this moment of grace. It will be brief.
11.05 WIBDI: A Prism for the New Paradigm
11.03 Why are American Muslims Poised To Vote En Masse for Obama?
11.03 Thinking About 2012
11.03 McCain's 'Real-ly Stupid' America
11.02 Studs Terkel: The Passing of An Icon
10.31 Justice Department Balks on Ohio Vote
10.31 The New Technology of Repression
10.30 The Trillion Dollar Tag Sale
10.30 Two Troubling Election Arguments
10.29 Targeting Dissent - The San Francisco Eight
10.29 Meeting Myself in Bucks County
10.27 Surging Into Syria: American Incursion Opens New Front in Quagmire
10.26 King of the Planet
10.25 Bush Intervenes in Ohio Voter Dispute
10.24 Government Is Already an Income-Transfer Machine
10.24 Seyed Mousavi - Guilty of Being Muslim in Police State America
10.23 Poor John Kerry...
10.23 Resistance As If It Really Mattered: It's Our Turn Now
10.20 Perfora Cariño, Perfora!
10.20 The Rising Body Count on Main Street
11.18 Vigilante Man: Crime Without End, Amen
11.06 The Beat Goes On: More Atrocity as Afghanistan Braces for Obama Surge
10.30 Expanding War, Contracting Meaning
10.30 Incentivizing Murder: Plan Colombia and the Bitter Fruits of Empire
10.24 Hell of a Success: Iraq After the Surge
10.23 Wrecked Iraq
10.21 Why Listen to Colin Powell, or Brokaw?
10.21 Heroes and Rogues
10.21 Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien: Obama's New Advisor Stands By His War Crimes
11.17 Thinking About Numbers
11.17 Worse Than the Great Depression?
11.12 Global Economic Tremors
11.11 “Too Big to Fail” Has an Easy Answer: Anti-Trust or Public Control
11.10 Thinking About Clocks
11.07 The Wages of Sin
11.04 America’s ‘Economic Egotism’: World Tires of Rule by Dollar
11.03 More from the Front Lines of the Financial Crisis
10.31 The End of Prosperity
10.28 The Flawed Economics of Nuclear Power
10.27 Thinking About Bears
10.27 Public Enemy Number One
10.22 This Time Is Different
10.22 Responding to the Financial Crisis: Butter, Not Guns
10.20 Thinking About Lulls
10.20 Hard Times
11.19 Extrajudicial Assassinations As Official Israeli Policy
11.18 The Era of Magical Thinking: SOFA Smokescreens and Presidential Power
11.03 Israel Needs Its Own Obama
BACKGROUNDING THE NEWS:
Bush's Signing Statement Dictatorship
Bush's signing statements are building blocks for dictatorship. The longer he builds, the darker America becomes.
Bush's postsigning statement declared that he would interpret many sections of the new law "in a manner consistent with the president's constitutional authority to supervise the unitary executive branch." In plain English, this means that many of the limits that Congress imposed on Bush's power--and that he accepted when he took the money Congress appropriated--are null and void. Why? Because the president says so.
After he signed the bill, Bush announced that he is effectively entitled to edit the report as he pleases. But his "right to edit" means that he is entitled to delete information and thereby prevent Congress from learning of how the feds continue to shred privacy.
George W. Bush has added more than 800 "signing statements" to new laws since he took office. Earlier presidents occasionally appended such comments to new statutes, but Bush is the first to use signing statements routinely to nullify key provisions of new laws.
The American Bar Association recently declared that Bush's signing statements are "contrary to the rule of law and our constitutional separation of powers." The Congressional Research Service reported last month that Bush is using such statements as part of his "comprehensive strategy to ... expand executive power."
Apparently, the government is no longer obliged to obey any law that Bush does not personally approve. At a June congressional hearing, Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) asked Justice Department lawyer Michelle Boardman for a list of all the laws that Bush has declared will no longer be enforced. Boardman replied, "I cannot give you that list."
How can we know which laws Bush approves of? It's a secret. Bush's personal thoughts thus become the ultimate law of the land. No one can know whether the government is violating the "law" because Bush has not publicly declared what the law is.
Americans may have to wait many years to learn what the rule of law meant in 2006. The truth may be suppressed until Bush's aides begin publishing their memoirs or until the Supreme Court has a change of mood and decides that the executive branch is not entitled to boundless secrecy.
So what is the meaning of "limited government" in the Bush era? Merely that the courts and Congress must be prohibited from limiting the president's power. Bush's signing statements are building blocks for dictatorship. The longer he builds, the darker America becomes.
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This story was published on October 11, 2006.
