posted March 07, 2006 12:32 PM            

As for the author of the piece you cite; I judge political leanings based on what the individual espouses and not on what they say they are or what the press says they are. I thought I made that clear?

Last place I would ever look for information is the self editing Wikipedia. I went into the site and edited a profile on Commander Corruption and it appeared...as I edited it, when I checked back. I don't consider anything I would find there to be authoritative. I later went back and removed what I had added. Not because it wasn't true, however.

An example of a true liberal is Joe Liberman and there aren't many true liberals left in the United States Congress.

Now Cardinalgal, please just spell out the charges against Bush...and not by describing events but by the specific violations of law which were illegal. In the law, one must state a claim or charge actions which are illegal and constitute a specific crime..... and not conclusions.

For instance, much has been made of the administration firing back at Joe Wilson for his lying article in the NY Times...exactly where one would go to look for lying articles..btw. But exposing the lies someone is telling about the president or the administration is not illegal, not immoral and represents no offense...much as the lying left would like to make it illegal for telling the truth about them.

Suggesting to the Blair government that 15 UN Resolutions and 12 years of evading his ceasefire agreement convinces Bush that Saddam will have to be removed by military action is not an offense. And it's especially not an offense when Bush then goes to the UN pleads the case against Saddam, has the administration involved in drafting UN Resolution 1441 which is adopted and which says it's the final chance for Saddam to comply with his ceasefire agreement and if not there will be serious consequences.

So, I'm asking you to spell it out in clear terms, not describe events but state impeachable charges.

Again.

1. Lied about Iraqi WMD
2. Lied about Saddam seeking Uranium from Africa

Must I make the case the left would attempt...and has already attempted to make against Bush? Or will you step in...and you should step in since you are one of those attempting to suggest Bush broke the law and committed impeachable offenses.

Defendant, Joe Blow is charged with violation of Texas criminal code 206.78, armed robbery, in that defendant, on December 1, 2005 did enter the premises at 2678 Jefferson Ave, Dallas, Texas, at approximately 1:15 in the afternoon, pointed a gun at the liquor store owner and robbed the owner of cash and stock at gunpoint.

Additional charges

Violation of Texas criminal code 206.80, using a gun in the commission of a crime.

Violation of Texas criminal code 206.88, assault with a deadly weapon.

Now, can you state the violation of specific law Bush broke...and if you wish, go on to describe the actions Bush took which constitute the violation?

posted March 07, 2006 02:26 PM              

quote:

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Lying about WMD is just one of the old, shopworn allegations leftist liars have made against the President. I was just giving you a starting point

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And saying it's a lie without proving it, is just one of the old ragged-edged Republican battle stances that's worn very thin There's your starting point jwhop - it's your turn to prove that Iraq had WMD's and to state where they've been found. In fact your party has had to move so far away from that old chestnut that they're now ascerting that the reasons behind going into Iraq were to remove a dictator or to bring democracy to the Iraqi people - delete as applicable according to whether or not there's an 'r' in the month or what colour socks you're wearing today. It's just as random!

"Leading with old news. On Wednesday night, CBS and NBC gave brief mention to how the Bush administration has officially ended the search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, but ABC and CNN treated the revelation as big news even though the lack of WMD in Iraq had been long acknowledged. Peter Jennings led World News Tonight with the subject and used it as a chance to regurgitate embarrassing assertions made by Bush and Cheney. Jennings trumpeted: "The Bush administration has given up the hunt for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. A final report from the Iraq Survey Group to be published soon basically contradicts nearly every prewar argument about weapons of mass destruction made by Mr. Bush and his senior officials." ABC followed with an excerpt from Barbara Walters' interview with Bush in which she pleaded: "But was it worth it if there were no weapons of mass destruction?" CNN's Judy Woodruff admitted that no WMD "might be like stating the obvious," but she stressed that "to others it is a reminder that one of President Bush's early justifications for the war has been discredited." MSNBC's Keith Olbermann fretted about the "tepid" response from Democrats to the news." http://www.mrc.org/cyberalerts/2005/cyb20050113.asp

quote:

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As for the author of the piece you cite; I judge political leanings based on what the individual espouses and not on what they say they are or what the press says they are. I thought I made that clear?

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Yes truly, you are an unsurpassed mover of goal posts jwhop

posted March 07, 2006 02:28 PM              

quote:

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Now Cardinalgal, please just spell out the charges against Bush...and not by describing events but by the specific violations of law which were illegal. In the law, one must state a claim or charge actions which are illegal and constitute a specific crime..... and not conclusions.

---

If you'd care to re-read the quotes from Elizabeth Holtzman's article, she outlines them quite succinctly. But if you're having trouble reading I'll give you a hand:-

"But it wasn't until the most recent revelations that President Bush directed the wiretapping of hundreds, possibly thousands, of Americans, in violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA)--and argued that, as Commander in Chief, he had the right in the interests of national security to override our country's laws"

"As a matter of constitutional law, these and other misdeeds constitute grounds for the impeachment of President Bush. A President, any President, who maintains that he is above the law--and repeatedly violates the law--thereby commits high crimes and misdemeanors, the constitutional standard for impeachment and removal from office. A high crime or misdemeanor is an archaic term that means a serious abuse of power, whether or not it is also a crime, that endangers our constitutional system of government."

"What then was the reason for avoiding the FISA court? President Bush suggested that there was no time to get the warrants. But this cannot be true, because FISA permits wiretaps without warrants in emergencies as long as court approval is obtained within three days. Moreover, there is evidence that the President knew the warrantless wiretapping was illegal. In 2004, when the violations had been going on for some time, President Bush told a Buffalo, New York, audience that "a wiretap requires a court order." He went on to say that "when we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so."

"A President can commit no more serious crime against our democracy than lying to Congress and the American people to get them to support a military action or war."

And it was you jwhop who pointed out that Clinton committed 'high crimes and misdemeanors' and that he 'committed perjury'

"And there was no serious plan for the aftermath of the war, a fact also noted in the Downing Street memo. The President's failure as Commander in Chief to

protect the troops by arming them properly, and his failure to plan for the occupation, cost dearly in lives and taxpayer dollars. This was not mere

negligence or oversight--in other words, maladministration--but reflected a reckless and grotesque disregard for the welfare of the troops and an utter

indifference to the need for proper governance of a country after occupation. As such, these failures violated the requirements of the President's oath of

office."

"Under the War Crimes Act of 1996 it is a crime for any US national to order or engage in the murder, torture or inhuman treatment of a detainee. (When a

detainee death results, the act imposes the death penalty.) In addition, anyone in the chain of command who condones the abuse rather than stopping it

could also be in violation of the act. The act simply implements the Geneva Conventions, which are the law of the land... More recently, the President

opposed the McCain Amendment barring torture when it was first proposed, and he tacitly supported Vice President Cheney's efforts to get language into the

bill that would allow the CIA to torture or degrade detainees. Now, in his signing statement, the President announced that he has the right to violate the new

law, claiming once again the right as Commander in Chief to break laws when it suits him."

quote:

---

But exposing the lies someone is telling about the president or the administration is not illegal, not immoral and represents no offense...much as the

lying left would like to make it illegal for telling the truth about them.

---

Have you provided proof for these 'truths' though jwhop, just as you would expect those who make the allegations to?

quote:

---

And it's especially not an offense when Bush then goes to the UN pleads the case against Saddam, has the administration involved in drafting UN

Resolution 1441 which is adopted and which says it's the final chance for Saddam to comply with his ceasefire agreement and if not there will be serious

consequences.

---

It's an offence if you don't give him that chance, which is entirely what the 2nd resolution was all about jwhop.

So to summarise as I believe you wanted me to...

1) Bush directed the wiretapping of hundreds, possibly thousands, of Americans, in violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) (a breach of

constitutional law)

2) Lied about WMD's by using false intelligence to attempt to mislead the US public into supporting military action in Iraq.

3) Violating the War Crimes Act 1996 by supporting the torture and mistreatment of detainees - Bush supported Cheney's efforts to get language into the bill

that would allow the CIA to torture and degrade detainees. And he opposed the McCain Amendment barring torture when it was first proposed. (White

House Counsel Alberto Gonzales himself advised President Bush in writing that US mistreatment of detainees might be criminally prosecutable under the

War Crimes Act.)

posted March 07, 2006 03:03 PM            

"And saying it's a lie without proving it, is just one of the old ragged-edged Republican battle stances that's worn very thin There's your starting point jwhop - it's your turn to prove that Iraq had WMD's and to state where they've been found. In fact your party has had to move so far away from that old chestnut that they're now ascerting that the reasons behind going into Iraq were to remove a dictator or to bring democracy to the Iraqi people - delete as applicable according to whether or not there's an 'r' in the month or what colour socks you're wearing today. It's just as random!" ....Cardinalgal

It's already been proved Bush did not lie about Iraqi WMD. 3 bipartisan committees including Congressional committees looked at that issue..among others and found the intelligence information reported to Bush was wrong. Bush is not an intelligence officer, not an intelligence analyst and when the Director of the CIA comes into a briefing with the president and says..."It's a slam dunk Mr. President, Iraq has WMD" the president has every reason to believe him and no reason not to. So when the President, based on the intelligence information passed on to him...and to Congress, goes before the nation and talks about Iraq's WMD, it is in no way, the President lying to the American public. Further the former Director, Central Intelligence, George Tenet was not appointed by Bush but was a holdover from the Clinton administration.

posted March 07, 2006 04:23 PM            

Court cases have confirmed the President's inherent authority to wiretap and use other means to gather intelligence without an order of the court.
"In Re: Sealed Case," the FISA appeals court decision cited a previous FISA case [U.S. v. Truong], where a federal court "held that the President did have inherent authority to conduct warrantless searches to obtain foreign intelligence information." ***Notice, the authority is inherent in the president.

The court's decision went on to say: "We take for granted that the President does have that authority and, assuming that is so, FISA could not encroach on the President's constitutional power." ****Notice, this authority is a constitutional power bestowed on the president.

Other presidents used warrantless searches in pursuit of gathering "foreign intelligence"
WASH POST, July 15, 1994, "Administration Backing No-Warrant Spy Searches": Extend not only to searches of the homes of U.S. citizens but also -- in the delicate words of a Justice Department official -- to "places where you wouldn't find or would be unlikely to find information involving a U.S. citizen... would allow the government to use classified electronic surveillance techniques, such as infrared sensors to observe people inside their homes, without a court order."

Attorney General's office concurs president has inherent authority...Constitutional Authority to conduct warrantless searches for gathering "foreign intelligence".
Deputy Attorney General Jamie S. Gorelick, the Clinton administration believes the president "has inherent authority to conduct warrantless searches for foreign intelligence purposes."

Warrantless searches have been used to convict US citizens under the provisions the searches were in pursuit of gathering "foreign intelligence".
Secret searches and wiretaps of Aldrich Ames's office and home in June and October 1993, both without a federal warrant.
Government officials decided in the Ames case that no warrant was required because the searches were conducted for "foreign intelligence purposes."

Bill Clinton signed Executive Orders for warrantless searches
Bill Clinton Signed Executive Order that allowed Attorney General to do searches without court approval

Jimmy Carter signed Executive Orders authorizing warrantless searches for gather "foreign intelligence"
Jimmy Carter Signed Executive Order on May 23, 1979: "Attorney General is authorized to approve electronic surveillance to acquire foreign intelligence information without a court order."

George W. Bush signed an Executive Order authorizing warrantless searches...wiretaps, email intercepts and eavesdropping on wireless transmissions. The difference is the Bush authorizations are examined and renewed every 45 days.

Congress granted the President authorization to conduct warrantless searches for foreign intelligence purposes.

"Whereas the United States is determined to prosecute the war on terrorism and Iraq's ongoing support for international terrorist groups combined with its development of weapons of mass destruction in direct violation of its obligations under the 1991 cease-fire and other United Nations Security Council resolutions make clear that it is in the national security interests of the United States and in furtherance of the war on terrorism that all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions be enforced, including through the use of force if necessary;

Whereas Congress has taken steps to pursue vigorously the war on terrorism through the provision of authorities and funding requested by the President to take the NECESSARY ACTIONS against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such persons or organizations;"

Turn out the lights, the party's over. The president...any president, has the Constitutional authority to gather foreign intelligence as commander in chief of the militaty forces of the United States.

The president's Constitutional Authority to conduct warrantless searches has been upheld by both the FICA Court and a Federal District Court.

Congress granted authority to take necessary actions against terrorists and terrorist organizations. Wiretaps and electronic eavesdropping in the pursuit of gathering foreign intelligence against terrorists and terrorist organizations is clearly necessary.

2 leftist charges of impeachable violations down the tubes.

posted March 07, 2006 04:56 PM              

we don't have to agree with it..but it is what it is..

posted March 07, 2006 05:46 PM            

quote:

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I trust you will not bring this matter back up Cardinalgal.

---

You trying to bully people again, Jwhop?

quote:

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Congress granted authority to take necessary actions against terrorists and terrorist organizations. Wiretaps and electronic eavesdropping in the pursuit of gathering foreign intelligence against terrorists and terrorist organizations is clearly necessary.

---

posted March 07, 2006 06:08 PM            

You would also think the left would drop the bullsh*t about impeaching the prez for eavesdropping if for no other reason than the courts have already ruled on the matter and found the president has the inherent constitutional authority to do so.

The problem with the lying left is that they are not big enough to admit when they are wrong.

No matter what a future court might rule on the matter, Bush could not possibly be impeached for following and relying on the decisions of both the FICA Courts and the Federal District Court.

So, it's a dead issue and the lying left look like the lying whiners they are for pursuing the matter.

As for you acoustic, I like to get things settled before moving on to other issues. That's the reason I want concurrence with what's already proven before moving on.

Lastly, I don't need to bully. I have the facts on my side as always, oh one who cannot even define MOST.

posted March 07, 2006 07:16 PM            

The latest example of the Left embracing a known hoax as almost as valid as the truth this comes to us from Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-MA, who, in a December 22, 2005, op-ed piece in the Boston Globe, recounted the story of a college student who was rousted by two government agents, because he had gone to the library in search of a copy of Mao Tse Tung's Little Red Book. Two days later, the Globe reported that the student had admitted to fabricating the tale, as any sensible person would have suspected in the first place. While the senator did not respond to this revelation, he did send out his spokeswoman to explain, "even if the assertion was a hoax, it did not detract from Kennedy's broader point that the Bush administration has gone too far in engaging in surveillance."

This, however, was not one errant detail in an otherwise convincing argument. In fact, Kennedy had no broader point. The Little Red Book story was his sole example of government surveillance gone mad, and it was a lie. Moreover, the senator did not even attempt to explain how this fictitious incident was relevant to the NSA's electronic surveillance, the Patriot Act, or any other power the president has used in the War on Terror.

The student had claimed to have been visited by agents from the Department of Homeland Security, which further refuted the story, since DHS doesn't even have agents of its own. Yet a man who was in the Senate at the time that it created that department (Kennedy was one of nine who voted against it) did not even bother to check the veracity of the kid's tall tale before spilling it onto the pages of the Globe.

If this behavior were peculiar to Ted Kennedy, it would be easy to laugh off, as all his words and actions typically are. However, the perpetuation of such wild rumors and hoaxes has long been the standard operating procedure for his colleagues on the Left. For example:

The 60 Minutes story suggesting that Bush had gone AWOL from the Air National Guard was discredited by bloggers literally overnight, but that didn't stop Democrats from repeating the false charges throughout the remainder of the 2004 campaign. They even used the fraudulent CBS report in a media offensive called "Operation Fortunate Son," almost a week after the incriminating documents obtained by that network were discovered to be forgeries.

In May of 2002, Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-NY, took to the Senate floor armed with a grossly misleading New York Post headline, which read, "BUSH KNEW."

"Bush knew what?" she demanded. She might have directed that question at the Post, whose accompanying article did not back up the sensational charge. Instead, she used the question to suggest that the president had advance knowledge about the 9/11 attacks, and allowed them to happen anyway. Two months later, Rep. Cynthia McKinney, D-GA, repeated Mrs. Clinton's accusation, and added that "persons close to this administration are poised to make huge profits off America's new war."

Late in 2003, presidential candidate Howard Dean called it "the most interesting theory that I've heard so far" that President Bush "was warned ahead of time by the Saudis." Not only did his fellow Democrats not dismiss him as a crackpot, they would later elect him chairman of the Democratic National Committee.

Evasively, Dean added that this was "nothing more than a theory -- it can't be proved." But why not, if it were true? Wouldn't it be likely that some record existed of the Saudis' warning? By writing off that possibility, Dean admitted that his bizarre suggestion was unsupportable, but concluded that an absolute lack of evidence was no reason not to still believe it.

At a 2002 fundraiser, Sen. Clinton was still questioning the legitimacy of the Bush presidency, by pushing her party's "selected, not elected" line. As she was certainly well aware, the Supreme Court did not "select" the president in the Bush v. Gore decision. All it did was put a stop to the illegal recounts in Florida. Nevertheless, post-election media recounts confirmed for any remaining doubters that Bush was the winner. Even if Al Gore had won his Supreme Court case, he still would have lost the election.

If anyone is aware of this fact, it is Al Gore himself, yet the former vice president took the opportunity of the 2004 convention to repeat the charge that Bush had been "selected" president by the judiciary.

Of all the Democrats' fabrications regarding the 2000 election, probably the most outrageous was the accusation that Republicans had "disenfranchised" black voters in Florida. Hearings at the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights failed to produce a single person who had been eligible to vote, and been denied the opportunity. Undeterred by the absence of evidence, the Democrats on the commission, led by Mary Frances Berry, released a report concluding that "widespread voter disenfranchisement" had taken place anyway.

During the 2004 election campaign, Sen. John Kerry repeatedly stated that a million black voters had been disenfranchised in Florida in the previous election. If that were true, one would have expected to see a million angry victims marching on Tallahassee. Their absence from the streets, like their absence from the commission's hearings, didn't faze Kerry or his fellow Democrats one bit.

Since Democrats have a particular fondness for racially provocative hoaxes, we can expect that they'll soon recycle the fallacy that black Americans' voting rights are in danger of being repealed in 2007.

The Voting Rights Act, which comes up for review next year, is certain to be renewed; President Bush has already said he intends to sign it. That law was meant as a temporary measure, to address specific abuses that were being committed by Southern Democrats, such as poll taxes and phony literacy tests. It does not establish black people's voting rights. The legislation which did that was the Fifteenth Amendment, and it cannot be repealed other than through passage of another constitutional amendment.

One would expect a former United States senator and presidential candidate to understand this, especially if he markets himself as the nation's leading distributor of racially sensitivity, as Bill Bradley did. In his 2000 Apollo Theater debate with Gore, however, Bradley said, "It is very important to make the Voting Rights Act permanent so that the right to vote will never be endangered for African-Americans." Not only did this statement misrepresent the relevant legislation, but it also fantasized that there were Republican bogeymen hatching a nefarious plot to disenfranchise black voters.

With the help of CBS News and MTV's "Rock the Vote," Sen. Kerry tried to frighten young voters during last year's campaign by claiming that President Bush had a secret plan to institute a draft. Even after Bush forcefully rejected the idea during a debate, Kerry persisted with his accusation, despite his lacking a shred of proof.

Mind you, that's the same John Kerry who, when he returned from Vietnam, participated in the phony "Winter Soldier Investigation," where many of the witnesses who testified about American war atrocities turned out to be impostors. Kerry himself recounted their fictitious testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1971, charging that American soldiers "had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in a fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam."

When confronted with these words during the 2004 campaign, Kerry only conceded that his language might have been "a little bit over the top." To this day, he refuses to admit to having no knowledge that the events he described ever happened.

And let's not forget Mrs. Clinton's "vast right-wing conspiracy," which she blamed for the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Her husband debunked this theory in a televised address, in which he said that his involvement with Lewinsky "constituted a critical lapse in judgment and a personal failure on my part, for which I am solely and completely responsible," and that "I misled people, including even my wife." Like the rest of America, Hillary Clinton heard this right from the horse's mouth, but she never retracted her conspiracy theory.
The purpose of these citations is not to suggest that leftists are engaged in a conspiracy to spread hoaxes and promote screwball theories, because they don't need to be. Their belief in the unbelievable comes to them naturally. If it didn't, they wouldn't be leftists.

These are people for whom Marxism has still not been sufficiently discredited. They still believe that American military strength invites enemy attacks, but disarmament and appeasement bring peace. They find it obvious that global warming causes snowstorms and record low temperatures, but they still haven't seen enough evidence to persuade them that human beings exist before birth.

When the truth repeatedly contradicts someone's beliefs, that person has three options: change his mind and accept the truth, reject the truth (consciously becoming a liar), or deny the objectivity of truth and perceive it as a social construct. In the last, whoever prevails determines factuality and truthfulness.

The Left has opted for the last of these choices. This means they can say practically anything they want, and it will become the truth just as long as their bloggers and rapid-response teams carry the day. In this way, they relieve themselves of the burden of scrutinizing their own statements. They can say with total confidence, for example, that the poor get poorer as the rich get richer, without letting all those inconvenient facts and statistics get in the way.

By this redefinition of truth, a hoax is just an idea that may or may not grow into a true story, depending on the success of the teller. This means that as long as a story is being told, it stands a chance of becoming the truth. Thus, Sen. Kennedy stands by his Globe editorial; Dan Rather and Mary Mapes stand by their "60 Minutes" report; John Kerry stands by his hallucinations; and Hillary Clinton stands by her man.

It's not enough for them to believe their own baloney, though. They've got to convince a significant number of others. Their whole point in spinning these tales is to win political power. It does not behoove them to perpetrate a hoax so silly that almost nobody will buy it.

posted March 07, 2006 08:03 PM              

elephant
donkey

smyblos fit very well, hehe

posted March 07, 2006 09:26 PM              

quote:

---

some people think they can say anything, never be called to account for lying and that if they can convince enough people with the lie, then the lie becomes reality.

---

Yup, jwhop!

posted March 07, 2006 11:17 PM              

Last Updated Wed, 16 Nov 2005 09:57:51 EST
CBC News

A spokesman for the U.S. military has admitted that soldiers used white phosphorus as an "incendiary weapon" while trying to flush out insurgents in the northern Iraqi city of Fallujah last year.

"White phosphorus is a conventional munition," Lt.-Col. Barry Venable told the British Broadcasting Corporation. "It is not a chemical weapon. They are not outlawed or illegal."

He added that though used mostly to provide smokescreens and flashes of light, in the Fallujah battle, "it was used as an incendiary weapon against enemy combatants."

High-ranking U.S. officials had earlier insisted that the substance, which can burn skin to the bone, was used only to help illuminate battle scenes.

"U.S. forces do not use napalm or white phosphorus as weapons," the American ambassador to London, Robert Tuttle, wrote in a letter to the Independent newspaper.

FROM NOV. 8, 2004: 'We will be successful,' Rumsfeld warns Fallujah insurgents

An unknown number of Iraqi women and children died of phosphorus burns during the hostilities, Italian documentary makers covering the battle for Fallujah have claimed

Other reporters on the scene have said U.S. forces used a combination of white phosphorus and explosives known as "shake 'n' bake."

Venable's comments could expose the United States to allegations that it has been using chemical weapons in Iraq.

The suspicion that former president Saddam Hussein was developing chemical weapons, as well as biological and nuclear ones, was one of the Bush administration's main justifications for the 2003 invasion of the Persian Gulf country.

http://www.cbc.ca/story/world/national/2005/11/16/phosphorus-fallujah051116.html

FLASHBACK: Weapons of Mass Destruction Employed by US to Imolate Falluja: White Phosphorus is a Chemical Weapon

Warning some gruesome images... http://www.uruknet.info/?hd=0&p=m12676&l=x

Did the US military use chemical weapons in Iraq?
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/1108/dailyUpdate.html

posted March 07, 2006 11:36 PM              

OHMIGOD! DAYDREAMER!

I am just sick looking at those horrible pictures...WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION, INDEED!

posted March 08, 2006 12:09 AM            

Presidential signing statements are old news to anyone who has served in the White House counsel's office. Presidents have long used them to add their two cents when a law passed by Congress has provisions they do not like, yet they are not inclined to veto it. Nixon's statements, for example, often related to spending authorization laws which he felt were excessive and contrary to his fiscal policies.

In this column, I'll take a close look at President Bush's use of signing statements. I find these signing statements are to Bush and Cheney's presidency what steroids were to Arnold Schwarzenegger's body building. Like Schwarzenegger with his steroids, Bush does not deny using his signing statements; does not like talking about using them; and believes that they add muscle.

But like steroids, signing statements ultimately lead to serious trouble.

Relying On Command, Rather Than Persuasion

Phillip Cooper is a leading expert on signing statements. His 2002 book, By Order of the President: The Use and Abuse of Executive Direct Action, assesses the uses and abuses of signing statements by presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. Cooper has updated his material in a recent essay for the Presidential Studies Quarterly, to encompass the use of signing statements by now-President Bush as well.

By Cooper's count, George W. Bush issued 23 signing statements in 2001; 34 statements in 2002, raising 168 constitutional objections; 27 statements in 2003, raising 142 constitutional challenges, and 23 statements in 2004, raising 175 constitutional criticisms. In total, during his first term Bush raised a remarkable 505 constitutional challenges to various provisions of legislation that became law.

That number may be approaching 600 challenges by now. Yet Bush has not vetoed a single bill, notwithstanding all these claims, in his own signing statements, that they are unconstitutional insofar as they relate to him.

Rather than veto laws passed by Congress, Bush is using his signing statements to effectively nullify them as they relate to the executive branch. These statements, for him, function as directives to executive branch departments and agencies as to how they are to implement the relevant law.

President Bush and the attorneys advising him may also anticipate that the signing statements will help him if and when the relevant laws are construed in court - for federal courts, depending on their views of executive power, may deem such statements relevant to their interpretation of a given law. After all, the law would not have passed had the President decided to veto it, so arguably, his view on what the law meant ought to (within reason) carry some weight for the court interpreting it. This is the argument, anyway.

Bush has quietly been using these statements to bolster presidential powers. It is a calculated, systematic scheme that has gone largely unnoticed (even though these statements are published in the Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents) until recently, when President Bush's used a signing statement to attempt to nullify the recent, controversial McCain amendment regarding torture, which drew some media attention.

Pumping Up the Bush Presidency With Signing Statements

Generally, Bush's signing statements tend to be brief and very broad, and they seldom cite the authority on which the president is relying for his reading of the law. None has yet been tested in court. But they do appear to be bulking up the powers of the presidency. Here are a few examples:

Suppose a new law requires the President to act in a certain manner - for instance, to report to Congress on how he is dealing with terrorism. Bush's signing statement will flat out reject the law, and state that he will construe the law "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."

The upshot? It is as if no law had been passed on the matter at all.

Or suppose a new law suggests even the slightest intrusion into the President's undefined "prerogative powers" under Article II of the Constitution, relating to national security, intelligence gathering, or law enforcement. Bush's signing statement will claim that notwithstanding the clear intent of Congress, which has used mandatory language, the provision will be considered as "advisory."

The upshot? It is as if Congress had acted as a mere advisor, with no more formal power than, say, Karl Rove - not as a coordinate and coequal branch of government, which in fact it is.

As Phillip Cooper observes, the President's signing statements are, in some instances, effectively rewriting the laws by reinterpreting how the law will be implemented. Notably, Cooper finds some of Bush's signing statements - and he has the benefit of judging them against his extensive knowledge of other President's signing statements -- "excessive, unhelpful, and needlessly confrontational."

posted March 08, 2006 12:11 AM            

Given the incredible number of constitutional challenges Bush is issuing to new laws, without vetoing them, his use of signing statements is going to sooner or later put him in an untenable position. And there is a strong argument that it has already put him in a position contrary to Supreme Court precedent, and the Constitution, vis-à-vis the veto power.

Bush is using signing statements like line item vetoes. Yet the Supreme Court has held the line item vetoes are unconstitutional. In 1988, in Clinton v. New York, the High Court said a president had to veto an entire law: Even Congress, with its Line Item Veto Act, could not permit him to veto provisions he might not like.

The Court held the Line Item Veto Act unconstitutional in that it violated the Constitution's Presentment Clause. That Clause says that after a bill has passed both Houses, but "before it become[s] a Law," it must be presented to the President, who "shall sign it" if he approves it, but "return it" - that is, veto the bill, in its entirety-- if he does not.

Following the Court's logic, and the spirit of the Presentment Clause, a president who finds part of a bill unconstitutional, ought to veto the entire bill -- not sign it with reservations in a way that attempts to effectively veto part (and only part) of the bill. Yet that is exactly what Bush is doing. The Presentment Clause makes clear that the veto power is to be used with respect to a bill in its entirety, not in part.

The frequency and the audacity of Bush's use of signing statements are troubling. Enactments by Congress are presumed to be constitutional - as the Justice Department has often reiterated. For example, take what is close to boilerplate language from a government brief (selected at random): "It is well-established that Congressional legislation is entitled to a strong presumption of constitutionality. See United States v. Morrison ('Every possible presumption is in favor of the validity of a statute, and this continues until the contrary is shown beyond a rational doubt.')."

Bush's use of signing statements thus potentially brings him into conflict with his own Justice Department. The Justice Department is responsible for defending the constitutionality of laws enacted by Congress. What is going to happen when the question at issue is the constitutionality of a provision the President has declared unconstitutional in a signing statement?

Does the President's signing statement overcome the presumption of constitutionality? I doubt it. Will the Department of Justice have a serious conflict of interest? For certain, it will.

Should thus Congress establish its own non-partisan legal division, not unlike the Congressional Reference Service, to protect its interests, since the Department of Justice may have conflicts? It's something to think about.

These are just a few practical and constitutional problems that arise when a president acts as if there is his government, and then there is the Congress' government. Signing statements often ignore the fact the only Congress can create all the departments and agencies of the Executive Branch, and only Congress can fund these operations.

And the power to create and fund is also, by implication, the power to regulate and to oversee. Congress can, to some extent, direct how these agencies will function without infringing on presidential power.

Impact Of Presidential Signing Statements

The immediate impact of signing statements, of course, is felt within the Executive Branch: As I noted, Bush's statements will likely have a direct influence on how that branch's agencies and departments interpret and enforce the law.

It is remarkable that Bush believes he can ignore a law, and protect himself, through a signing statement. Despite the McCain Amendment's clear anti-torture stance, the military may feel free to use torture anyway, based on the President's attempt to use a signing statement to wholly undercut the bill.

This kind of expansive use of a signing statement presents not only Presentment Clause problems, but also clashes with the Constitutional implication that a veto is the President's only and exclusive avenue to prevent a bill's becoming law. The powers of foot-dragging and resistance-by-signing-statement, are not mentioned in the Constitution alongside the veto, after all. Congress wanted to impeach Nixon for impounding money he thought should not be spent. Telling Congress its laws do not apply makes Nixon's impounding look like cooperation with Congress, by comparison.

The longer term impact of signing statements is potentially grave - and is being ignored by the Bush administration. But it cannot be ignored forever. Defiance by Bush of Congressional lawmaking will come back to haunt this President.

Watergate was about abuse of power. Nixon, not unlike Bush, insisted on pushing the powers of the presidency to, and beyond, their limits. But as Nixon headed into his second term with even grander plans than he'd had in the first term, the Congress became concerned. (And for good reason.)

Bush, who has been pushing the envelope on presidential powers, is just beginning to learn what kind of Congressional blowback can result.

First, there are the leaks: People within the Executive branch become troubled by a president's overreaching. When Nixon adopted extreme measures, people within the administration began leaking. The same is now happening to Bush, for there was the leak about the use of torture. And, more recently, there was the leak as to the use of warrantless electronic surveillance on Americans.

Once the leaks start, they continue, and Congressional ire is not far behind. The overwhelming Congressional support for Senator John McCain's torture ban suggests, too, that Congress will not be happy if leaks begin to suggest the President - as his signing statement foreshadows - is already flouting the ban.

In short, Bush's signing statements, which are now going over the top, are going to cause a Congressional reaction. It is inevitable. If Republican lose control of either the House or Senate - and perhaps even if they don't, if the subject is torture or an egregious violation of civil liberties -- then the Bush/Cheney administration will wish it had not issued all those signing statements.

Indeed, the Administration may be eating its words - with Congress holding the plate out, and forcing the unconstitutional verbiage back down. That, in the end, is the only kind of torture Americans ought to countenance.