Amazing... Bush creates his own line item veto

Miller wrote:

Debra_Law wrote:

BernardR is a reincarnation of Mort B A T (a/k/a mortkat) in another of a series of reincarnations via a new user name. He probably has more user accounts than the most prolific member on this board has posts.

Debra, that's dam spokey.

Miller, BernardR, Mort B A T, et al. Don't you feel silly sitting at your keyboard, inventing multiple identities, and using one invented identity to defend another invented indentity on the very issue of multiple user accounts? If you think about it, it's the height of insanity. Perhaps you should seek treatment for your multiple online personality disorder.

You, and your split personalities, once identified, will now be ignored. I guess you will need to dig around in your bag of user accounts and find one that isn't so obvious so you can continue your identity-switching fun a little longer without detection. What an exciting time you're having, huh?

JustanObserver wrote:

come back and try behaving like an adult.

Adult? Is that why JUSTAnOB, you've got a baby as an avatar? Or is that what you really look like?

Debra_Law wrote:

Miller wrote:

Debra_Law wrote:

BernardR is a reincarnation of Mort B A T (a/k/a mortkat) in another of a series of reincarnations via a new user name. He probably has more user accounts than the most prolific member on this board has posts.

Debra, that's dam spokey.

Miller, BernardR, Mort B A T, et al. Don't you feel silly sitting at your keyboard, inventing multiple identities, and using one invented identity to defend another invented indentity on the very issue of multiple user accounts? If you think about it, it's the height of insanity. Perhaps you should seek treatment for your multiple online personality disorder.

You, and your split personalities, once identified, will now be ignored. I guess you will need to d

ig around in your bag of user accounts and find one that isn't so obvious so you can continue your identity-switching fun a little longer without detection. What an exciting time you're having, huh?

Maybe Nikki/twin-peaks/redheat/Roxxxanne/etc. can tell you what it's like Deb.

McGentrix wrote:

Debra_Law wrote:

Miller wrote:

Debra_Law wrote:

BernardR is a reincarnation of Mort B A T (a/k/a mortkat) in another of a series of reincarnations via a new user name. He probably has more user accounts than the most prolific member on this board has posts.

Debra, that's dam spokey.

Miller, BernardR, Mort B A T, et al. Don't you feel silly sitting at your keyboard, inventing multiple identities, and using one invented identity to defend another invented indentity on the very issue of multiple user accounts? If you think about it, it's the height of insanity. Perhaps you should seek treatment for your multiple online personality disorder.

You, and your split personalities, once identified, will now be ignored. I guess you will need to d

ig around in your bag of user accounts and find one that isn't so obvious so you can continue your identity-switching fun a little longer without detection. What an exciting time you're having, huh?

Maybe Nikki/twin-peaks/redheat/Roxxxanne/etc. can tell you what it's like Deb.

WTF are you talking about?

Roxxxanne wrote:

McGentrix wrote:

Debra_Law wrote:

Miller wrote:

Debra_Law wrote:

BernardR is a reincarnation of Mort B A T (a/k/a mortkat) in another of a series of reincarnations via a new user name. He probably has more user accounts than the most prolific member on this board has posts.

Debra, that's dam spokey.

Miller, BernardR, Mort B A T, et al. Don't you feel silly sitting at your keyboard, inventing multiple identities, and using one invented identity to defend another invented indentity on the very issue of multiple user accounts? If you think about it, it's the height of insanity. Perhaps you should seek treatment for your multiple online personality disorder.

You, and your split personalities, once identified, will now be ignored. I guess you will need to d

ig around in your bag of user accounts and find one that isn't so obvious so you can continue your identity-switching fun a little longer without detection. What an exciting time you're having, huh?

Maybe Nikki/twin-peaks/redheat/Roxxxanne/etc. can tell you what it's like Deb.

WTF are you talking about?

He's saying you have engaged in a "series of reincarnations via a new user name," that you have dug "around in your bag of user accounts" and engaged in "identity-switching," and that you have a "multiple online personality disorder."

At least I think that's what he's talking about.

Ticomaya wrote:

Roxxxanne wrote:

McGentrix wrote:

Debra_Law wrote:

Miller wrote:

Debra_Law wrote:

BernardR is a reincarnation of Mort B A T (a/k/a mortkat) in another of a series of reincarnations via a new user name. He probably has more user accounts than the most prolific member on this board has posts.

Debra, that's dam spokey.

Miller, BernardR, Mort B A T, et al. Don't you feel silly sitting at your keyboard, inventing multiple identities, and using one invented identity to defend another invented indentity on the very issue of multiple user accounts? If you think about it, it's the height of insanity. Perhaps you should seek treatment for your multiple online personality disorder.

You, and your split personalities, once identified, will now be ignored. I guess you will need to d

ig around in your bag of user accounts and find one that isn't so obvious so you can continue your identity-switching fun a little longer without detection. What an exciting time you're having, huh?

Maybe Nikki/twin-peaks/redheat/Roxxxanne/etc. can tell you what it's like Deb.

WTF are you talking about?

He's saying you have engaged in a "series of reincarnations via a new user name," that you have dug "around in your bag of user accounts" and engaged in "identity-switching," and that you have a "multiple online personality disorder."

At least I think that's what he's talking about.

I didn't ask you. BTW are you still a lawyer?

Anyway, your claims are total bullshit. Stop trying to libel me.

Hey, roxxxanne - I checked the link - 'sup with that? Are you all those people?

DrewDad wrote:

I wonder what Posner would write concerning Mr. BernardR?

ROFL

I know that Debra LAW has retired from the heavy onus of replying to my posts...

Monday, May 01, 2006
President Bush: "It's Not Law Unless I Say So (And Even If I Said So)"


JB


Today, May the 1st, is Law Day, celebrating the Rule of Law, which, under this Administration, has been honored more in the breach than the observance. Indeed, this article by Charlie Savage in the Boston Globe points out that

President Bush has quietly claimed the authority to disobey more than 750 laws enacted since he took office, asserting that he has the power to set aside any statute passed by Congress when it conflicts with his interpretation of the Constitution. Among the laws Bush said he can ignore are military rules and regulations, affirmative-action provisions, requirements that Congress be told about immigration services problems, ''whistle-blower" protections for nuclear regulatory officials, and safeguards against political interference in federally funded research.

Savage is pointing to one of the effects of the explosion of Presidential signing statements under the Bush Presidency: Bush's decision-- instead of vetoing legislation-- to state that certain parts of laws that he signs are unconstitutional and will not be enforced or will be applied in very limited ways. One effect of this policy, as I've described here, is that the President may be directing his subordinates to refuse to enforce a wide variety of federal laws in secret, with little or no public accountability, and with no effective way for the courts or Congress to hold him to his duties to enforce the law and "take care that the laws be faithfully executed" under the Constitution.

A second important effect of Bush's policy is that he doesn't have to take the political heat for vetoing statutes that he believes are unconstitutional or unconstitutionally overbroad. Indeed, he has not yet vetoed a single bill sent to him by Congress.


The irony is that, at least in the early years of the Republic, the only time that Presidents tended to use their power of veto was when they believed that a law was unconstitutional. Bush's decision *never* to veto any bills he believes are unconstitutional is in some tension with his duties under the Constitution, at least if his views about unconstitutionality are in good faith. Surely Presidents shouldn't be required to veto every bill that passes their desk that has a constitutional difficulty, especially if the problem is a relatively minor part of a major piece of legislation. However, it is hard to argue that none of the 750 bills he claims are unconstitutional don't deserve a veto if he is serious about the constitutional claims he is making. One suspects that the President is primarily interested in escaping accountability for executive actions rather than having courts determine the constitutionality of provisions the President objects to; this is especially the case in the area of foreign relations, prisoner detention and prisoner interrogation. The Bush Administration didn't want Congress regulating how the it treated prisoners, regarding any such interventions as unconstitutional; at the same time, it didn't want the courts deciding the question of constitutionality either. It simply wanted to be free of legal obligations or responsibilities in this area other than those that it choose for itself.


Bush is not the first President to try this strategy, but he has taken it to new extremes, making it a regular part of his relationship to law, as Savage details in his article. Making this a regular and pervasive practice is constitutionally worrisome, because it allows the President to escape responsibility for enforcing laws that he himself signs into law based on what may be unreasonable claims about constitutionality which are devised primarily to increase his own power. It allows the President to gain many of the advantages of the veto without incurring the political disadvantages, and it allows him, by riddling bills with exceptions in how he will enforce them, to produce what is in effect legislation that Congress never passed. In this way, Bush does an end run around the logic of separation of powers, one of whose central purposes, it should be pointed out, is to restrain the arbitrary exercise of power.


Bush has already adopted President Nixon's view that if the President authorizes something, it isn't illegal, despite what the text of the law says. Now Bush has taken the converse position that if the President doesn't agree with legislation, even legislation that he signs, it isn't law. Together, these two attitudes are deeply corrosive of the Rule of Law and move us down the path to a dictatorial conception of Presidential power-- that is, the conception that the President on his own may dictate what is and what is not law, rather than the President merely being the person in constitutional system entrusted with faithful implementation and enforcement of the law.