Quote :

"President Bush this week asserted that he has the executive authority to disobey a new law in which Congress has set minimum qualifications for future heads of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Congress passed the law last week as a response to FEMA's poor handling of Hurricane Katrina. The agency's slow response to flood victims exposed the fact that Michael Brown, Bush's choice to lead the agency, had been a politically connected hire with no prior experience in emergency management. To shield FEMA from cronyism, Congress established new job qualifications for the agency's director in last week's homeland security bill. The law says the president must nominate a candidate who has ``a demonstrated ability in and knowledge of emergency management" and ``not less than five years of executive leadership." Bush signed the homeland-security bill on Wednesday morning. Then, hours later, he issued a signing statement saying he could ignore the new restrictions. Bush maintains that under his interpretation of the Constitution, the FEMA provision interfered with his power to make personnel decisions."

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2006/10/06/bush_cites_authority_to_bypass_fema_law/?p1=MEWell_Pos1

He's doing a heckuva job.

10/6/2006 12:37:18 PM

laws dont apply to our emporer

10/6/2006 12:41:22 PM

WE'RE AT WAR

10/6/2006 12:48:38 PM

REGULATION BAD!

/libertarians

10/6/2006 1:14:50 PM

this guy.....this fucking guy

10/6/2006 1:26:12 PM

Quote :

"spöokyjon: Bush signs, invalidates new FEMA regulations... He's doing a heckuva job."

Damn Andrew Jackson for his meddling! 176 years of this is too much! Clearly the Republic is teetering on the brink of utter destruction!

10/6/2006 1:29:28 PM

hahah, Don't mention that other presidents have done this before.

10/6/2006 1:46:28 PM

Quote :

"Previous administrations had made use of signing statements to dispute the validity of a new law or its individual components. George H. W. Bush challenged 232 statutes through signing statements during four years in office and Clinton challenged 140 over eight years. George W. Bush's 130 signing statements contain at least 750 challenges.[4] [7] In the words of a New York Times commentary: And none have used it so clearly to make the president the interpreter of a law's intent, instead of Congress, and the arbiter of constitutionality, instead of the courts.[8] The signing statement with the McCain Detainee Amendment, prohibiting cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of detainees in U.S. custody attracted controversy: The Executive Branch shall construe [the torture ban] in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the President to supervise the unitary Executive Branch and as Commander in Chief and consistent with the constitutional limitations on the judicial power. This statement specifically refers to a unitary executive theory, under which the President asserts broad authority to use his independent judgment to interpret and apply the law. The President has with the signing statement to the McCain Detainee Amendment reserved the right to waive the "torture ban," effectively re-writing the law passed by Congress.[9]"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signing_statements

and he's doing all this with both houses of congress republican

[Edited on October 6, 2006 at 1:56 PM. Reason : .]

10/6/2006 1:54:23 PM

Just a question. What percentage of bills is he doing it vs. those that previous administrations have. Are we putting through more laws with both houses of congress being the presidential party?

Also, if you add the vetos of the previous administrations into the mix, is there still a huge disparity?

10/6/2006 2:06:08 PM

from the same link as ^^:

Quote :

"Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) introduced the Presidential Signing Statements Act of 2006 on July 26, 2006. [2]The bill would: 1. Instruct all state and federal courts to ignore presidential signing statements. ("No State or Federal court shall rely on or defer to a presidential signing statement as a source of authority.") 2. Instruct the Supreme Court to allow the U.S. Senate or U.S. House of Representatives to file suit in order to determine the constitutionality of signing statements. [3] The bill was referred to the Senate Judiciary Committee, which Specter chairs, on the day it was introduced.[4]"

interesting

10/6/2006 2:08:35 PM

slightly more authoritative than wikipedia...

http://www.usdoj.gov/olc/signing.htm

10/6/2006 2:10:40 PM

not like it was written 13 years ago or anything.

also: that wikipedia article is well-referenced (and they reference that DOJ article -- as does nearly any reputable article/source talking about signing statements). so yeah, that's a good add, i suppose. but is more tangential than the wikipedia article, which goes over more recent developments and provides other perspectives.

[Edited on October 6, 2006 at 2:16 PM. Reason : don't know why i care.]

10/6/2006 2:11:33 PM

Quote :

"REGULATION BAD! /libertarians"

I don't have a problem with regulation if the guy to be regulated is either an immediate threat to society or if he's just plain stupid. In other words, Dubya.

10/6/2006 2:12:54 PM