A Nation of laws?
If I had a buck for every time some Republican windbag pontificates that ours is a nation of laws I would be able to fill my gas tank and pay my rent. (We the people should impose a hypocrisy tax on our legislators.) As is usually the case, the laws are selectively enforced, depending on who does the breaking. A case in point was illustrated in a recent NY Times editorial.
“President Bush doesn't bother with vetoes; he simply declares his intention not to enforce anything he dislikes. Charlie Savage at The Globe reported recently that Mr. Bush had issued more than 750 "presidential signing statements" declaring he wouldn't do what the laws required. Perhaps the most infamous was the one in which he stated that he did not really feel bound by the Congressional ban on the torture of prisoners.
"In this area, as in so many others, Mr. Bush has decided not to take the open, forthright constitutional path. He signed some of the laws in question with great fanfare, then quietly registered his intention to ignore them. He placed his imperial vision of the presidency over the will of America's elected lawmakers. And as usual, the Republican majority in Congress simply looked the other way.
“Many of the signing statements reject efforts to curb Mr. Bush's out-of-control sense of his powers in combating terrorism. In March, after frequent pious declarations of his commitment to protecting civil liberties, Mr. Bush issued a signing statement that said he would not obey a new law requiring the Justice Department to report on how the F.B.I. is using the Patriot Act to search homes and secretly seize papers if he decided that such reporting could impair national security or executive branch operations.
“In another case, the president said he would not instruct the military to follow a law barring it from storing illegally obtained intelligence about Americans. Now we know, of course, that Mr. Bush had already authorized the National Security Agency, which is run by the Pentagon, to violate the law by eavesdropping on Americans' conversations and reading Americans' e-mail without getting warrants.”
Though Mr. Bush would be a major contributor to the hypocrisy tax coffers, he would be seriously challenged by the immigration hard-liners that want to deport the 12 million or so undocumented migrants that are currently doing our dirty work.
Not to be outdone by any group are the members of the House Rules Committee that recently introduced a smokescreen called The Lobbying Accountability and Disclosure Act, H.R. 4975. The slick chairman, David Dreier of California, a Ken Doll look alike, skillfully excluded any attempt to meaningfully reform the rules that breed so much corruption in government. With bombast, rudeness and hackneyed rhetorical flourishes, duplicitous Dave foisted a farce that only the gullible believe will make one bit of difference. A nation of laws, indeed!
“President Bush doesn't bother with vetoes; he simply declares his intention not to enforce anything he dislikes. Charlie Savage at The Globe reported recently that Mr. Bush had issued more than 750 "presidential signing statements" declaring he wouldn't do what the laws required. Perhaps the most infamous was the one in which he stated that he did not really feel bound by the Congressional ban on the torture of prisoners.
"In this area, as in so many others, Mr. Bush has decided not to take the open, forthright constitutional path. He signed some of the laws in question with great fanfare, then quietly registered his intention to ignore them. He placed his imperial vision of the presidency over the will of America's elected lawmakers. And as usual, the Republican majority in Congress simply looked the other way.
“Many of the signing statements reject efforts to curb Mr. Bush's out-of-control sense of his powers in combating terrorism. In March, after frequent pious declarations of his commitment to protecting civil liberties, Mr. Bush issued a signing statement that said he would not obey a new law requiring the Justice Department to report on how the F.B.I. is using the Patriot Act to search homes and secretly seize papers if he decided that such reporting could impair national security or executive branch operations.
“In another case, the president said he would not instruct the military to follow a law barring it from storing illegally obtained intelligence about Americans. Now we know, of course, that Mr. Bush had already authorized the National Security Agency, which is run by the Pentagon, to violate the law by eavesdropping on Americans' conversations and reading Americans' e-mail without getting warrants.”
Though Mr. Bush would be a major contributor to the hypocrisy tax coffers, he would be seriously challenged by the immigration hard-liners that want to deport the 12 million or so undocumented migrants that are currently doing our dirty work.
Not to be outdone by any group are the members of the House Rules Committee that recently introduced a smokescreen called The Lobbying Accountability and Disclosure Act, H.R. 4975. The slick chairman, David Dreier of California, a Ken Doll look alike, skillfully excluded any attempt to meaningfully reform the rules that breed so much corruption in government. With bombast, rudeness and hackneyed rhetorical flourishes, duplicitous Dave foisted a farce that only the gullible believe will make one bit of difference. A nation of laws, indeed!
posted by Unknown at 5/06/2006 01:26:00 AM
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