Sunday Discussion Group

January 8, 2006

Last week, Bush issued a “signing statement” explaining how he interprets new anti-torture measures passed by Congress. In short, the president believes he can ignore the law when he believes he should.

Friday, Bush signed the annual Defense authorization bill for the fiscal year. True to form, it came with another “signing statement.” There’s a lot of bureaucratic language, but here’s a paragraph that summarizes the White House approach nicely.

A number of provisions of the Act, including sections 905, 932, 1004, 1212, 1224, 1227, and 1304, call for the executive branch to furnish information to the Congress on various subjects. The executive branch shall construe such provisions in a manner consistent with the President’s constitutional authority to withhold information the disclosure of which could impair foreign relations, national security, the deliberative processes of the Executive, or the performance of the Executive’s constitutional duties.

In all, the “signing statement” identified about 20 parts of the Defense bill that the president doesn’t particularly care for, and will honor only if Bush decides he should. Indeed, these “signing statements” themselves are intended to “address specific provisions of legislation that the White House wishes to nullify.”

It’s a direct affront to congressional authority. Lawmakers pass laws for the White House to execute; Bush thanks Congress for its time and says he’ll pick and choose parts of the laws that he finds convenient.

I realize Bush has some sycophantic allies on the Hill, but will lawmakers sit blithely by and let the president humiliate them? Historically, Congress has had at least some institutional pride. Even when one party controls both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, lawmakers have taken separation of powers seriously enough to at least pretend they’re a co-equal branch of government.

The House GOP may have some other issues on their mind right now, but is Congress ready to take a stand, as some have hinted, or will we have to wait for a Democratic majority?

Ultimately this is very sad, kinda pathetic actually. What should be the most powerful branch of government has been smugly sidelined and now looks like a child who is lost or knows not what to do.
Where will the arrogance of BushCo end?

  • I can’t wait for the day when Scotty McGibberish explains to the press that when the President signed this bill into law, he had his fingers crossed behind his back.

  • …but will lawmakers sit blithely by and let the president humiliate them?

    Yes.

    Bush delivers everything the Republicans (and a few Democrats) promise to their lobbyists and special interest constituents who are writing the laws of the land these days. He signs everything put in front of him. The ‘signing statement’ is just the Bush version of the line item veto.

    Remember the bad old days when having sex and lying about it was ‘above the law’?

  • I suppose if Congress decides to start standing up against the Administration on this issue, we’ll soon see a whole new crop of talking points about “Legislative activism” and “Congressional tyrrany.” Putting a different name on the same old crap always seems to work for them.

    And really, this in combination with the NSA spying story tells us all we need to know about the Administration’s thoughts on separation of powers. It’s a fairy tale, in their eyes. They think that Bush has the power to ignore the courts AND to ignore the Congress. And people back him up no matter what.

  • It’s time for the Bush supporters to start admitting it when Bush screws something up or does something illegal. The fact that they won’t makes them a little bit like Nazis.

    The Republicans who post comments on Political Animal will say “everything is always Bush’s fault with you people.” What exaclty is that comment supposed to mean? Since the critical point of view on the Bush administration without exception has a basis- critics can always point to an action he took, or a study he ordered ignored, for example, putting a totally unqualified person in charge of a disaster response agency- such Republican comments add nothing to the debate.

    It’s the Bush supporters who aren’t admitting that Bush does anything wrong. But we know they’re not all blind, deaf and dumb. They need to face reality before they can talk back about the facts.

    Otherwise they should be challenged to first admit the state of reality before they’re allowed to take any other part in the debate.

  • I remember when a lot of psychoanalyzing of Clinton was going on here on the web and in MSM. One theory was, I always thought, right on target. Clinton liked to believe he could get away with stuff while at the same time having a self-destructive streak (child of alcohol, they say) which made him also revel in the possibility of being caught. “I dare you…”

    That’s also a way of looking at what the Bush White House is doing, unlikely as it may seem right now when we feel boxed in by their corruption and power. He sometimes seems to be piling up evidence against himself in a devil-may-care fashion. Bush & Co. are like serial killers who keep sending messages with clues to the police, taunting the authorities and claiming superiority even as they deliberately lay the groundwork for their own destruction.

  • Today’s NYTimes Magazine has an excellent piece on presidential powers by Noah Feldman. It places the current debate in historical perspective. A short summary, which does not do the long article justice, is: presidential power has increased overtime, but the current administration has overstepped. His conclusion is:

    The allocation of power within the government is not determined simply by reading the Constitution and figuring out what it says.To the contrary, the balance of powers is established through a game of give and take, a struggle in which each branch fends for itself. An excellent example is the Supreme Court’s ruling in Bush v. Gore. The important fact about that decision was not that in assuring President Bush’s election, it inaugurated a period of single-party government. It was, rather, that the court deliberately chose to intervene in a process laid out in the Constitution for dealing with electoral disputes – a process according to which Congress, not the court, was given the power to choose the president. Bush would likely have ended up president in either case; but once the court wrested from Congress the constitutional power to decide who won, few in Congress seriously disputed the legitimacy of its actions. The court had spoken, and its decision was treated as final.

    The lesson for the balance of powers is a deep one: the prize of power goes to the bold. Right now, the presidency and its supporters have the upper hand. For Congress to regain some of its constitutional prominence, the court will have to keep a level head, and the representatives themselves will have to be willing to take some chances. Such an effort need not be restricted to national security issues – it would be nice if Congress also took more responsibility for making many of the hard domestic policy choices that it currently leaves to administrative agencies. But the national security problem is more pressing, and for the moment it offers Congress the best chance to redeem itself from its recent inaction

    The money quote:the prize of power goes to the bold. I think Harry Reid understands this, but Congress is not run by one man. Harry needs a team of bold people. Let’s give it to him in 2006.

  • Can someone please elaborate on the prevelance of ‘signing statements’ for me? The Wash Post writer this morning on Meet the Press indicated that these signing statements were fairly common and have been used by each president–she specifically mentioned Carter. Is this true? Or, as I may have picked up, are those signing statements much different than the these additions Bush has been using?
    Can someone more in the know educate me here?
    Thanks
    Deb

  • Lawmakers pass laws for the White House to execute;

    I think that maybe the problem is that Bush only knows one meaning of the word “execute” – the one he learned administering the death penalty in Texas.

  • Can someone please elaborate on the prevelance of ‘signing statements’ for me?

    From the WaP article CB linked to(click on “wishes to nullify):

    In the 1980s, the Reagan administration, like other White Houses before and after, chafed at the reality that Congress’s reach on the meaning of laws extends beyond the words of statutes passed on Capitol Hill. Judges may turn to the trail of statements lawmakers left behind in the Congressional Record when trying to glean the intent behind a law. The White House left no comparable record.

    In a Feb. 5, 1986, draft memo, Alito, then deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel, outlined a strategy for changing that. It laid out a case for having the president routinely issue statements about the meaning of statutes when he signs them into law.

    From this it appears to be a Reagen “innovation” concocted by Alito.

  • We are a nation of laws and an elected government including the President. Our troops are dying in the name of democracy and this elected official is declaring himself Dictator.How completely ignorant you would have to be to support this total failure of a President.

    Just a thought. The dems need to be careful in being too vocal in removing troops from Iraq. If the troops are removed and total chaos ensues (probable) the GOP and voters will blame the Dems. The point that the war is unwinnable (Howard Dean) needs to be proven and accepted by the voters or Dems will pay at election time.

  • the GOP and voters will blame the Dems.

    Hello, the GOP always blames the Dems. It’s item 1 in every play of their playbook. To the extent that the votors accept this, it’s a result of right-wing media dominance and Democratic fecklessness.

    Stop worrying about what the GOP will say. They will always blame us, and they will always lie, and they will always do so at the maximum possible volume.

    The Dems best strategy is to tell the truth. The truth is that the Iraq war was a hideous mistake, and that it is being lost, and that George W. Bush committed us all to a trillion bucks in debt in order to provide Iran with a new ally. The elections have just led to an uptick in the violence, and the administration has neither the capacity nor the inclination to improve things.

    The truth of the above will become ever more undeniable as time goes on. Stop triangulating and face the truth. “Being careful” is the last thing the Dems need right now.

  • Wouldn’t it be a fairy tale if a group of battered, drug addicted whores cleaned themselves up, and went on strike against their abusive pimp master?
    Wouldn’t it be a bigger fairy tale if he agreed to abide by their demands?

  • Jack Murtha at a town meeting in Virginia this week said, (re:spineless democratic congressmen not providing leadership alternatives to Bush)…..

    “when these folks go home for the recess they are going to find people are unhappy with this (the lack of leadershipagainst the Iraq war)…and more and more …and Finally they are going to have to get off their hind legs and start speaking out and not be afraid to speak out about this administration”

    With the collapse of the “hammer” and his lobby-based special interest grip on congress ……..and before it can re-formulate as it inevitably will….
    The congress that returns from recess may not resemble the lap dog congress we have come to expect. I suspect all bets are off in terms of predicting political outcomes in the next few years.

    It feels like a tipping point has occured in our national awareness during this window of opportunity.
    .

  • –The truth of the above will become ever more undeniable as time goes on. Stop triangulating and face the truth. “Being careful” is the last thing the Dems need right now. —

    JIMBOB

    I would agree that honesty is the best policy but in todays world that is not true. Half the country still wants to support this president and the GOP. Even the most miniscule of good news for the administration bumps up their poll numbers. The dems can either play it GOP (spin and smear) or play it smart. I would prefer smart. Unfortunately Public opinion is fickle and speaking the truth is sometimes costly if it is made public at the wrong time. The game still has to bel played.

  • I had been thinking that the presidential power grab would be just the ticket the Democrats need to regain control of at least one branch of Congress. The argument would be simple. The President has pushed the balance of power out of equilibrium. We are on a dangerous path toward authoritarianism. His own party has shown no willingness to reestablish the equilibrium. The only way to save our democracy is to elect a Democratic Congress as a balance against unchecked executive power.

    I think that the Republicans also recognize this. This morning Brownback said to Stephanopoulos,

    It didn’t, in my vote. I voted for that resolution. That was a week after 9/11. There was nothing you were going to do to stop us from going to war in Afghanistan, but there was no discussion in anything that I was around that that gave the president a broad surveillance authority with that resolution.

    I am wary of Brownback’s motives. I don’t take this as a sign that the Republican Congress is ready reign in Bush. I think it more likely that Brownback is trying to head off Republican loses in 2006 appearing to care and then stalling it until after the midterm elections.

    When Specter holds hearings on the NSA scandal keep a close eye Brownback. He may talk tought but end up carrying water for Bush.

  • …but will lawmakers sit blithely by and let the president humiliate them?

    A pat to the head of lap dogs like Joe Lieberman does wonder for congressional self-esteem:

    Attaboy Joey, good little doggy….pat pat… wag wag….fawn fawn.

    [Aside: A new dog breed: Stiff-backed sychophants– you can get them to do anything if you hit them on the backsides with a rolled up copy of the Constitution.]

  • The problem is that the war is being run by those who can’t run it.

    Even if you support the war, or rather, especially if you support the war, you should not entrust it to a bunch of people who run it so as to:

    1) line their own pockets- and their friends’- by illegally stealing mounds of taxpayer dollars for reconstruction contracts

    2) getting our own troops unnecessarily killed

    3) defeat the war’s stated goals by emboldening our enemies and providing them with stockpiles of unguarded, ex-Baath munitions to plunder.

    War-supporters who don’t act as a critical check on incredible abuses like these are, at best, making incompetent decisions, or at worst, complicit to a national disaster: the worst, biggest scandal in America’s history, the Iraq war.

    Congress is going to come back and start telling the story that even voters who supported the war need to hear: that you cannot have people like this administration running an undertaking of this magnitude. It’s like giving entrusting your spendthrift, blacksheep cousin with a few thousand to buy himself a car, and then instead of buying something reliable he throws the moeny away on the worst, most unsafe jallopi you could find at his friend’s sleazy used-car lot. I’m sure all of you are going to get out there and tell this story, too, on the blogs, in the newspapers, and to your friends. We’ve got to write our Senators and Representatives and let them know that we want them to talk about the inadequate body armor provided to our troops in Iraq, and how it led directly to 80% of the Marine deaths we’ve had so far. And every damn time a Republican even starts to complain that we’re criticizing Bush, we’re going to answer back, “Well what the hell are you doing?!? Nothing. By failing to keep an eye on Bush, these people have given him and his friends’ incompetence an opportunity to run wildly rampant. Congress has got to stop it.

  • Here’s a chuckle from Raw Story,

    Aides to President George W. Bush are trying to identify all the photos that may exist of the President and lobbyist Jack Abramoff together, TIME’s White House Correspondents Mike Allen and Matt Cooper report in Monday editions

    Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we set out to deceive.

  • Remember this:

    EVERYTHING BUSH IS DOING AND HAS DONE IS ABOUT GETTING OUT OF OFFICE WITHOUT HAVING ANOTHER TERRORIST ATTACK.

    Think about it: Cheney liteally said that if Kerry was elected we’d ‘get hit again’. The implicit promise was that if you elect GWB you won’t get hit.

    Bush isn’t running scared from Iraq, he’s running scared of the possibility that we might suffer another terrorist attack. If that happens, not only does his legacy suffer, but the Republican Party loses its national security credentials. This is the nightmare that keeps Bush up at night. This is what leads him to act like a tyrant. He knows we’re vulnerable, so no excess is too great in protecting us and covering his own ass.

    Abramoff, Iraq, Katrina, jobs, pollution, Libby — none of it matters to Bush. None of it. Because he knows if we take a hit while he’s on watch that it’s his ass and he has nowhere to hide. This fear drives the man. And his pathetic response to this fear defines him.

  • speaking the truth is sometimes costly if it is made public at the wrong time.

    I’d argue that it’s the failure to speak the truth that’s even more costly. When the lies collapse, the only people with credibility will be those who haven’t been lying.

    Listen, Iraq is going nowhere good. You know it and I know it. Like all of George W. Bush’s works, it is heading to disaster (that is, even a worse disaster than it is already). A certain number of the ignorant will blame this on the Democrats. They are going to do this no matter what. It’s pointless to pander to them. All that happens if you pull your punches is that everyone else concludes Democrats are incapable of punching hard.

  • Think about it: Cheney liteally said that if Kerry was elected we’d ‘get hit again’. The implicit promise was that if you elect GWB you won’t get hit.

    If you run with this theory, the Iraq war itself becomes a gambit of truly epic proportions: (1) the president gets to put on his “cowboy war president” face paint; (2) the troops become the target, an exposed and (increasingly it seems, intentionally) under protected group as far away from American soil as they can get; (3) terrorists, distracted by the exposed flank, fail to hit on US soil, at least until a Dem is in office.

    A crazy theory, but this is one administration that hasn’t managed to stop surprising anyone with their eyes open since they rode in like a bunch of outlaws.

  • Abramoff, Iraq, Katrina, jobs, pollution, Libby — none of it matters to Bush. None of it. Because he knows if we take a hit while he’s on watch that it’s his ass and he has nowhere to hide. This fear drives the man. And his pathetic response to this fear defines him.

    It is an interesting perspective.

    Especially if you remember back to the 2000 Florida mess.

    Do you remember then how scared B looked ?
    I remember him claiming to have won the presidency and looking like he might piss his pants in primetime.

    But still…

    Fear requires that you care what people think… doesn’t it?

    So I think this perspective misses wide…

    After all:

    B is a rich fuck with no empathy at all. He could just as soon shoot you as shit on you. So in that sense you are right… he doesn’t give a fuck, but not because he is frightened. But rather because–HE IS A SOCIOPATH.

    B’s brain is diseased. The man is sick (like Stalin) and the only thing holding him in check is the historical inertia of our country.

    Be certain of this though: He is chomping at the bit. Oh yeah, verily he is chomping. He’d love to be able to throw your ass and my ass into the dungeon or the oven. After all, God has chosen him to be president. Remember?

  • Do his comments actually change anything about the law, though? Wouldn’t Bush, if he’s charged with violating one of the laws he has “signed” that he doesn’t feel apply to him, still be held to the court’s interpretation of the law, not his (Bush’s)?

    It sounds like what these are is more like “I don’t agree with this, but I’m signing it into law anyway.” Then later if he breaks the law, or people try to trap him into admitting he was for it before he was against it, he can simply say “I was never for it in the first place.”

    But the law is still there, right? And he’s not above that law, even if he thinks he should be above it?

  • I don’t think Bush is actually much of an entity. He is just the visible image of a hidden shadow government that is mulit-layed and multi-national with vast corporate and god knows what other resources. Bush as a man is far too inept and dim to take over and corrupt a constitutional democracy of a proud longstanding tradition like the US. He’s got to be getting lots of help from powerful friends who would rather control the president than be the president. Reminds me ofhow Tony Soprano lets his uncle be the figurehead so as to deflect the heat from the feds, while Tony really is running the show .
    Who ever is really running the country into the ground is far to smart to be publicly associated with the crime. What we need to learn fast, is how to protect the constitution from modern economic, technological, and social forces that were unimagined by the founders.
    ie. the “right to bare arms” could mean biological or nuclear weapons.
    Focusing on the wooden puppet in a cowboy hat plays right into the hands of the illusionists behind the curtain.

  • Well, for some purposes focusing on criticizing Bush is what you want to do. If he’s made the figurehead of a lot of these actions, then Bush is the guy you want to criticize when you’re telling the story of how those actions were wrong, say, when we’re closing in on a presidential election. Bush is the example of why a Republican is not good in the White House during war-time.

    You’ll notice that people come out and try to distract attention away from criticism of Bush in a forum, if they can. Like notice the comments on this thread about Bush being scared as hell of a terrorist attack, and doing anything he can to prevent one. Is that just supposed to confuse us, or what? Is it supposed to squeeze the idea of Bush’s protecting the country into a paradigm we liberals are supposed to be able to accept (“oh, Bush is protecting us, but he’s doing it for selfish motives, that joke…”)– to try to stop us from pointing out the 80% of the Marine fatalities in Iraq could have been saved if this war had been done better?

    Activist conservatives just desperately want to stop and minimize any criticism of Bush. Some of them are just weird like that. They would do weird stuff like that in order to divert attention. Remember the fake gay-rights activists in Florida, for example.

    The conservatives think that if the people focus their disappointment on a specific conservatiove figurehead like Bush, it will be an easy story line for the people to understand and communicate, and it will make it easier for them to see the evil that other Republican politicians do, too. Maybe the Republican activists just have such a “win no matter what” playground mentality that they’re very resilient to looking at the people they elect critically.

    But we’ve got to get the message out there so that someone will, because the Republicans are tragically mismanaging this country, and the consequences of that have been ruining people’s lives: the Katrina relief effort, the failure to conduct the war and occupation properly, you name it… You people know the examples.

    For confronting the broader culture of corruption, and educating people about it, you can talk about the actions of the Bush administration and the Republican congress first so that people know what the consequences have been, and then you can move on to explain how those actions have come to pass– what the origins were with the background players.

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