President Bush objects to judges who legislate from the bench rather than follow the rule of law and the clear intentions of the legislative branch. But he is guilty of similar activism — big time.
Bush has issued more than 500 bill-signing statements — twice as many as President Clinton and former President Bush combined. Bush used these little-known statements to attach his own interpretation of legislation and signal whether he wants agencies to implement the new laws, including the recently passed ban on torture.
Lawmakers tried to rein in Bush’s activism in 2003 by passing a provision requiring the Justice Department to inform Congress whenever the administration ignored a law based on constitutional objections. But Bush used a bill-signing statement to assert his right to ignore that requirement.
Apparently, activism is in the eye of the beholder.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
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29 Comments
The same people who rightly speak out against the activism of Bush were cheering on the activism of Clinton.
“Comrades! We must abolish the cult of the individual decisively, once and for all.” [Nikita Khrushchev , February 25, 1956 20th Congress of the Communist Party]
“All our lives we fought against exalting the individual, against the elevation of the single person, and long ago we were over and done with the business of a hero, and here it comes up again: the glorification of one personality. This is not good at all.” [Vladimir Lenin, as quoted in Not by Politics Alone]
“We must stop thinking of the individual and start thinking about what is best for society.” [Hillary Clinton, 1993]
“We can’t be so fixated on our desire to preserve the rights of ordinary Americans …” [President Bill Clinton, 'USA Today' March 11, 1993: Page 2A]
There Is really little more to know about Bush and the rule of law than his statement about the Constitution: ” Quit throwing that G-d piece of paper in my face.”
The powers behind him, those Zionists, Neocons, and other assorted crap, want absolute power and will settle for nothing less.
I’ll post a link to what they’re saying about the World Court in the Hague.
Worst. President. Ever.
What’s left to say?
He is infact the worst president since Bill Clinton!
Scroll down to ICC { Int. World Court.
Al Jazeera, the Arab-language satellite news network based in Qatar, reported Monday that the Jordanian parliament approved two new security laws over the weekend. One of them would shield US citizens from war crimes prosecution in the International Criminal Court, and the other is aimed at fighting terrorist financing.
But it was the ICC waiver that provoked the most heated debate, the network reports, with many opposition MPs saying the only reason that Jordan signed it was that the US threatened to withhold aid if Jordan didn’t support the US position. The Bush administration is vehemently opposed to the ICC.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0109/dailyUpdate.html
PL,Worst? I wouldn’t accord him that honor. There’ve been some real humdingers in our history. Anyway, if it belongs to anybody in this administration, it’s the people who have their hands up his back.
Bush’s puppeteers are concerned that if we manage to take the United States back from them, they will be open to prosecution for war-crimes. There is no other reason for them to be so adamant about sealing themselves away from ICC prosecution for the war=crimes, which they have been, and are committing now.
Remember, we prosecuted Mulucavich {spl} for war-crimes in that same court.
Remember. Bush is not smart enough to do this or understand exactly what it means.
“WASHINGTON – President Bush agreed with great fanfare last month to accept a ban on torture, but he later quietly reserved the right to ignore it, even as he signed it into law.
Acting from the seclusion of his Texas ranch at the start of New Year’s weekend, Bush said he would interpret the new law in keeping with his expansive view of presidential power. He did it by issuing a bill-signing statement — a little-noticed device that has become a favorite tool of presidential power in the Bush White House.
In fact, Bush has used signing statements to reject, revise or put his spin on more than 500 legislative provisions. Experts say he has been far more aggressive than any previous president in using the statements to claim sweeping executive power — and not just on national security issues.
“It’s nothing short of breathtaking,” said Phillip Cooper, a professor of public administration at Portland State University. “In every case, the White House has interpreted presidential authority as broadly as possible, interpreted legislative authority as narrowly as possible and pre-empted the judiciary.”
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/13578051.htm
Karl Rove and his henchmen are putting the pen into Bush’s hand and telling him where to sign.
Who erected this fool anyway? We all know he was not elected! If we could find out who erected him in to office in the first place ….. we would know who was smart enough to have this dumb puppet sign all these bills. It is odvious our erected pres is not really that smart! Has America come to this? How about democracy in America?
Ian,You used those same 4 quotes a few days ago. Don’t you have any new material?BTW, your Kruschev and Lenin quotes sound like the are talking about King George.
Brown, please stop feeding the troll. Thanks!
bush (capitilization INTENTIONALLY forgotten) is perhaps the greatest threat to demoocracy in the history of this Republic. Despite being once not elected and once narrowly elected, he elects to conserve more and more power to himself and his minions……or puppeteers. He does this brazenly and inthe face of approximately half of the citizens over whom he “presides”
bush himself once said “This would be so much easier if I were I dictator”. Well mr. bush is making it evermore easy in that direction and in the service of those FEW who he TRULY represents.
Be afraid be very afraid.
Thanks, Rage.
Rage is correct, brown. Ian is “persona non grata” around here with his racist, ignorant, utterly despicable posts.
We don’t dignify anything he writes with a response.
Bush does not vary from the Israelis Likud Zionist’s agenda. He is not allow to do that. Bush becomes somewhat impatient, with the slow but methodical implementation of the takeover of the United States government, as with his frustrated quote: “This would be so much easier if I were a dictator” { he has heard that term “dictator” discussed in the “back-room,” where all decisions are made about what he is to say and do }.
Israel supported the Gore-Lieberman Ticket in the 2000 presidential election. Lieberman’s position on Iraq, as written by him in the Wall Street Journal, is clearly anti-American, and, in my opinion President Lieberman would now be presiding over the United States.
When Bush narrowly squeezed into the presidency, Ariel Sharon immediately made a trip to Washington to try to repair whatever damage had occurred by backing Gore/Lieberman. Much to his somewhat disbelief, amazement, and delight, he found not only the absence of trouble, but a born-again fool sitting in the oval office.
Sharon moved his PNACers into place surrounding Bush, including Richard Armitage, William J. Bennett, Jeb Bush, Ellen Bork (the wife of Robert Bork), Dick Cheney, Zalmay Khalilzad, Lewis Libby, Richard Perle, Donald Rumsfeld, Douglas Feith and Paul Wolfowitz. and sat down with the Mossad to plan the much needed “event” necessary to set into motion the “The Project for the New American Century.”
Osama Bin Laden had been kicked-out of Saudi Arabia, as an embarrassment to the Kingdom and had landed with a little training camp in Afghanistan, and a small organization he called al-Qaida. The Mossad must have had difficulty keeping a straight face watching that ragtag group of misfits swinging on those monkey-bars getting into shape, while the Mossad and Sharon knew that soon al-Qaida would become famous.
It would take almost a year to train pilots to fly the extremely difficult task of navigating a cumbersome fuel-laden multi engine aircraft with the precision necessary to hit a 300 ft. wide target within a few stories of dead center, while accelerating into a tight-turn @ over 500 MPH.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PNAC
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Feith
Israel switched to Bush in the 2004 election.
National Security Adviser and soon to be Secretary of State Rice told Robert Novac back in 2003 that Hizbollah was the greatest threat in the “war on terrorism” and Novac argued the al-Qaida was a greater threat because Hizbollah was only in southern Lebanon and not worldwide like al-Qaida.
Little did Novac understand that al-Qaida was just a ghost that would only be summoned-up at the behest of Ariel Sharon.
Israel first said that the Palestinians would not be allowed to vote in East Jerusalem. The US told them that the Palestinians would be allowed to vote, so Israel back-off and said OK.
The United States has the power to make peace, but will not do so. What is our excuse?
http://www.haaretz.co.il/hasen/spages/667685.html
Since Ed brought up the subject of Presidential signing statements (thanks, dude!), want to know where this bizarre, “cute” way of circumventing Congress originated?
“In a 1986 memo to the group, Alito proposed to have Reagan issue ’signing statements,’ defining exactly how the President understood a law’s meaning, when he approved a bill that Congress had passed. Reagan issued such statements occasionally, but the Bush Administration has dramatically expanded their use. In one issued two weeks ago, which infuriated both Democrats and Republicans, Bush suggested he would reconsider a recently passed torture ban if he felt there was an imminent national-security threat.”
http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/01/09/alito.tm/
“Strong” is one word to describe Mr. Alito. “Unlimited” might fairly characterize his view of Executive power. I’m sorry I dropped the ball on this, as I think I might very well have changed some Editorial minds. . .
Rage, I like “suspected terrorist” or “links to al-Qaida”
From now on “Rage” consider yourself “just suspected” which gives me the right to syphon all of the gas out of your car.
Dude? Sir Dude, I’ll have you know, besides I read the “Wall Street Jgas” One of these days, I’ll tell them off.
Alito is reall bad news.
Report: Iraq war costs could top $2 trillion
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0110/dailyUpdate.html
It seems that Bush has been out of control for a LONG time. Why is it that there has been a great deal of interest in his running amuck, just recently? Where was the media earlier?
You do have to wonder if this concerted effort to reclaim presidential power was all Bush’s idea. Cheney told him that they were to go into the Whitehouse in 2001 and act like they had a mandate even if the vote did not exactly look that way. Rove is always into this “perception is reality” baloney.
I don’t think Bush is really interested enough in the job to write all these “bill signing statements”.
Steven, it seems the tide turned with Katrina. I’d love to hear their explanation as to why that was the turning point.
RD,
I am pretty sure you are right about the Katrina effect. The caine was preceded by the Cindy Sheenan during a slow news cycle.
But, I recall nearly everyone talking about the videos of the people in New Orleans. And the administration just kept fumbling the disaster relief. Maybe then it was impossible for the word to not get out.
It would be interesting to hear people who know-about-and-watch-the-media’s take on this apparent change.
PL and Rage,Thanks for the tip about Ian. He seems like such a DA. I had to go back to work recently and don’t have as much time to spend here as I would like.
I think Bush’s downward spiral is a conjunction of several things. I think the tide started to turn when he came up with the Social Security privatization plan. There’s a reason they call it the “third rail of politics”. Social Security was the first real issue where republicans broke ranks with Bush and found out they could survive his wrath. Remember…it’s not about policy, it’s ALL about being re-elected. Republican politicians are not going down with the ship, so to speak. Katrina surely put a stake through the heart of the Bush Machine. Americans saw for the first time on TV that we looked like a third world nation. The greatest and most powerful nation on the planet came across looking like stumbling fools. We couldn’t help our own people, Bush was barely able to interrupt his vacation for one of the worst disasters in our history. A whole lot of people realized that Bush is not “one of us”. And all we hear now is scandal. Yes, Bush is finished. He’s not a lame duck, he’s a dead duck.
Another too-late night. Oh well. Sir Dude, it’s sheer coincidence that I saw this, but it’s too appropriate to pass up:
http://www.ucomics.com/rallcom/2005/12/01/