Once again, our royally bad joke of a pResident has been caught making up his own laws. Once again, we almost didn't find out. Not that it really matters when you have a Congress that excels only at rolling over and playing dead.
The Boston Globe:
WASHINGTON -- When President Bush signed the reauthorization of the USA Patriot Act this month, he included an addendum saying that he did not feel obliged to obey requirements that he inform Congress about how the FBI was using the act's expanded police powers. . .
Bush signed the bill with fanfare at a White House ceremony March 9, calling it ''a piece of legislation that's vital to win the war on terror and to protect the American people." But after the reporters and guests had left, the White House quietly issued a ''signing statement," an official document in which a president lays out his interpretation of a new law.
In the statement, Bush said that he did not consider himself bound to tell Congress how the Patriot Act powers were being used and that, despite the law's requirements, he could withhold the information if he decided that disclosure would ''impair foreign relations, national security, the deliberative process of the executive, or the performance of the executive's constitutional duties."
Bush wrote: ''The executive branch shall construe the provisions . . . that call for furnishing information to entities outside the executive branch . . . in a manner consistent with the president's constitutional authority to supervise the unitary executive branch and to withhold information . . . "
The statement represented the latest in a string of high-profile instances in which Bush has cited his constitutional authority to bypass a law. . .
Everyone keeps saying that people get the leaders they deserve. I don't believe it. I don't know any man, woman, or child who deserves the contemptible and unconstitutional leadership of outlaw George W. Bushie.
Josh Marshall weighs in on the "lawless presidency of George W. Bush," as does Andrew Sullivan, who asks, "Upon what Constitution doth this our Caesar feed?"
Graphic found at AfterDowningStreet.org
Bush King George Patriot Act Signing Statement Congress Lawless Bush
