thats cuz he's the Decider....

[Guest guest]

WASHINGTON -- 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.

--Boston Globe editorial, see below

 

Bush Says He's Above the Law Again

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/032406J.shtml

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.

 

 

Bush policy of pre-emptive war is illegal under international law

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article6917.htm

 

All the reasons given by Bush for the war have proven false or illegal.

Pre-emptive war is illegal under international law, as is war for regime

change. Iraq war was illegal and breached UN charter,

says Kofi Annan, Secretary-General of the United Nations

September 16, 2004

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1305709,00.html

 

-------------------

 

Veto? Who Needs a Veto?

The New York Times | Editorial

05 May 2006

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/050506M.shtml

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/05/opinion/05fri1.html?n=Top%2fOpinion%2fEditoria\

ls%20and%20Op%2dEd%2fEditorials

 

One of the abiding curiosities of the Bush administration is that after

more than five years in office, the president has yet to issue a veto.

No one since Thomas Jefferson has stayed in the White House this long

without rejecting a single act of Congress. Some people attribute this

to the Republicans' control of the House and the Senate, and others to

Mr. Bush's reluctance to expend political capital on anything but tax

cuts for the wealthy and the war in Iraq. Now, thanks to a recent

article in The Boston Globe, we have a better answer.

 

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.

 

We know from this sort of bitter experience that the president is not

simply expressing philosophical reservations about how a particular law

may affect the war on terror. The signing statements are not even all

about national security. Mr. Bush is not willing to enforce a law

protecting employees of nuclear-related agencies if they report misdeeds

to Congress. In another case, he said he would not turn over scientific

information " uncensored and without delay " when Congress needed it.

(Remember the altered environmental reports?)

 

Mr. Bush also demurred from following a law forbidding the Defense

Department to censor the legal advice of military lawyers.

 

(Remember the ones who objected to the torture-is-legal policy?)

Instead, his signing statement said military lawyers are bound to agree

with political appointees at the Justice Department and the Pentagon.

 

The founding fathers never conceived of anything like a signing

statement. The idea was cooked up by Edwin Meese III, when he was the

attorney general for Ronald Reagan, to expand presidential powers. He

was helped by a young lawyer who was a true believer in the unitary

presidency, a euphemism for an autocratic executive branch that ignores

Congress and the courts. Unhappily, that lawyer, Samuel Alito Jr., is

now on the Supreme Court.

 

Since the Reagan era, other presidents have issued signing statements to

explain how they interpreted a law for the purpose of enforcing it, or

to register narrow constitutional concerns. But none have done it as

profligately as Mr. Bush. (His father issued about 232 in four years,

and Bill Clinton 140 in eight years.) 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.

 

Like many of Mr. Bush's other imperial excesses, this one serves no

legitimate purpose. Congress is run by a solid and iron-fisted

Republican majority. And there is actually a system for the president to

object to a law: he vetoes it, and Congress then has a chance to

override the veto with a two-thirds majority.

 

That process was good enough for 42 other presidents. But it has the

disadvantage of leaving the chief executive bound by his oath of office

to abide by the result. This president seems determined not to play by

any rules other than the ones of his own making. And that includes the

Constitution.

 

 

 

What's gonna happen when the buses don't run

and what's gonna happen when the, winter comes

what are you gonna do,

what are you gonna do

when the oil runs out?