Our Permanent Constitutional Crisis

The Boston Globe has more news on President Bush's use of signing statements to circumvent the laws he signs...

Boston Globe: Bush shuns Patriot Act requirement-
In addendum to law, he says oversight rules are not binding

When President Bush signed the reauthorization of the USA Patriot Act this month, he included an addendum saying that he did not feel obliged to obey requirements that he inform Congress about how the FBI was using the act's expanded police powers.

The bill contained several oversight provisions intended to make sure the FBI did not abuse the special terrorism-related powers to search homes and secretly seize papers. The provisions require Justice Department officials to keep closer track of how often the FBI uses the new powers and in what type of situations. Under the law, the administration would have to provide the information to Congress by certain dates.

Bush signed the bill with fanfare at a White House ceremony March 9, calling it ''a piece of legislation that's vital to win the war on terror and to protect the American people." But after the reporters and guests had left, the White House quietly issued a ''signing statement," an official document in which a president lays out his interpretation of a new law.

In the statement, Bush said that he did not consider himself bound to tell Congress how the Patriot Act powers were being used and that, despite the law's requirements, he could withhold the information if he decided that disclosure would ''impair foreign relations, national security, the deliberative process of the executive, or the performance of the executive's constitutional duties."...

(bold added by me)

Besides the obvious insanity of the President not finding the extremely expansive powers granted by the Act accomodating enough, there are many other issues here as well. The whole point of the Patriot Act reauthorization debate was that Congress would repass the law, if the White House would agree on a few small changes to ease civil liberties concerns. Yet, as soon as Congress passed the bill and gave the President his photo-op, he betrayed their goodwill and that of the American people as well. We've seen this imperial arrogance play out recently when he used another signing statement to assert that while he agreed to Congress' torture ban in theory and would sign the bill, he was not bound by its rules. And we saw it big time when he declared himself above the FISA system and the laws governing surveillance in this country.

Does this sound like democracy to you? While Congress, the courts, and much of the American populace may be too worried about their own self-interests to care, our system of government is being eroded further every day by this administration and their radical (and wholely unamerican) views on executive power.

As Josh Marshall notes, "Our permanent constitutional crisis under the lawless presidency of George W. Bush [continues]... There's really no overstating the importance of the president's disrespect for and serial violations of the law he has sworn twice to uphold."

No, there isn't, which is why we must continue to push the issue until we get accountability.

[Via Andrew Sullivan, who asks "Upon what Constitution doth this our Caesar feed?". Good question.]