{"id":191,"date":"2006-10-09T10:11:25","date_gmt":"2006-10-09T15:11:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2006\/10\/09\/bushs-signing-statement-dictatorship\/"},"modified":"2006-10-09T10:11:25","modified_gmt":"2006-10-09T15:11:25","slug":"bushs-signing-statement-dictatorship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2006\/10\/09\/bushs-signing-statement-dictatorship\/","title":{"rendered":"Bush&#8217;s Signing Statement Dictatorship"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The fine folks at <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.fff.org\/comment\/com0610c.asp\">Future of Freedom Foundation<\/a><\/strong> posted today a piece I did on Bush&#8217;s endless nullifications of federal law.<\/p>\n<p>The longer he reigns, the more difficult it is to give Bush the benefit of the doubt.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Bush\u2019s Signing Statement Dictatorship<\/strong><br \/>\nby James Bovard, October 9, 2006<\/p>\n<p>President Bush has once again decreed that his personal pen is the highest law of the land. In a statement issued on October 4, 2006, he announced that he would ignore many provisions of the Homeland Security appropriations act he signed earlier in the day. His action vivifies that the rule of law now means little more than the enforcement of the secret thoughts of the commander in chief.<\/p>\n<p>Bush\u2019s postsigning statement declared that he would interpret many sections of the new law \u201cin a manner consistent with the president\u2019s constitutional authority to supervise the unitary executive branch.\u201d In plain English, this means that many of the limits that Congress imposed on Bush\u2019s power \u2014 and that he accepted when he took the money Congress appropriated \u2014 are null and void. Why? Because the president says so.<\/p>\n<p>The new law declared that only the Homeland Security Department\u2019s privacy officer could alter or delay the department\u2019s mandatory report on how its actions and policies affected Americans\u2019 privacy. Congress included this safeguard because of the Bush administration\u2019s long record of intruding into Americans\u2019 lives \u2014 from the Total Information Awareness system, to vacuuming up information on airline passengers, to stockpiling phone records of millions of citizens.<\/p>\n<p>After he signed the bill, Bush announced that he is effectively entitled to edit the report as he pleases. But his \u201cright to edit\u201d means that he is entitled to delete information and thereby prevent Congress from learning of how the feds continue to shred privacy.<\/p>\n<p>Bush pulled the same trick in March after he inked a renewal of the USA PATRIOT Act, announcing that he would scorn notifying Congress on how the feds are using PATRIOT Act powers. Bush declared that he would interpret the law \u201cin a manner consistent with the president\u2019s constitutional authority to &#8230; withhold information.\u201d Bush is apparently convinced that he is entitled to govern in secrecy, and any provision of a law to the contrary violates his imperial prerogatives.<\/p>\n<p>George W. Bush has added more than 800 \u201csigning statements\u201d to new laws since he took office. Earlier presidents occasionally appended such comments to new statutes, but Bush is the first to use signing statements routinely to nullify key provisions of new laws.<\/p>\n<p>The \u201cunitary executive\u201d doctrine assumes that all power rests in the president and that checks and balances are an archaic relic. This is the same \u201cprinciple\u201d the Bush administration invoked to deny Congress everything from Iraqi war plans to the records of the Cheney Energy Task Force. Bush has invoked the \u201cunitary executive\u201d doctrine almost 100 times since taking office, according to Miami University professor Christopher Kelley.<\/p>\n<p>The American Bar Association recently declared that Bush\u2019s signing statements are \u201ccontrary to the rule of law and our constitutional separation of powers.\u201d The Congressional Research Service reported last month that Bush is using such statements as part of his \u201ccomprehensive strategy to &#8230; expand executive power.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Apparently, the government is no longer obliged to obey any law that Bush does not personally approve. At a June congressional hearing, Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) asked Justice Department lawyer Michelle Boardman for a list of all the laws that Bush has declared will no longer be enforced. Boardman replied, \u201cI cannot give you that list.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>How can we know which laws Bush approves of? It\u2019s a secret. Bush\u2019s personal thoughts thus become the ultimate law of the land. No one can know whether the government is violating the \u201claw\u201d because Bush has not publicly declared what the law is.<\/p>\n<p>Americans may have to wait many years to learn what the rule of law meant in 2006. The truth may be suppressed until Bush\u2019s aides begin publishing their memoirs or until the Supreme Court has a change of mood and decides that the executive branch is not entitled to boundless secrecy.<\/p>\n<p>So what is the meaning of \u201climited government\u201d in the Bush era? Merely that the courts and Congress must be prohibited from limiting the president\u2019s power. Bush\u2019s signing statements are building blocks for dictatorship. The longer he builds, the darker America becomes.<\/p>\n<p>James Bovard is the author of Attention Deficit Democracy [2006] as well as The Bush Betrayal [2004], Lost Rights [1994] and Terrorism and Tyranny: Trampling Freedom, Justice and Peace to Rid the World of Evil (Palgrave-Macmillan, September 2003) and serves as a policy advisor for The Future of Freedom Foundation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The fine folks at Future of Freedom Foundation posted today a piece I did on Bush&#8217;s endless nullifications of federal law. The longer he reigns, the more difficult it is to give Bush the benefit of the doubt. Bush\u2019s Signing Statement Dictatorship by James Bovard, October 9, 2006 President Bush has once again decreed that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[659,22,6,10],"class_list":{"0":"post-191","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"hentry","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"tag-attention-deficit-democracy","9":"tag-bovard","10":"tag-bush"},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Bush&#039;s Signing Statement Dictatorship - James Bovard<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2006\/10\/09\/bushs-signing-statement-dictatorship\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Bush&#039;s Signing Statement Dictatorship - James Bovard\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The fine folks at Future of Freedom Foundation posted today a piece I did on Bush&#8217;s endless nullifications of federal law. The longer he reigns, the more difficult it is to give Bush the benefit of the doubt. 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The Wall Street Journal called Bovard \\\"the roving inspector general of the modern state\\\" and Washington Post columnist George Will called him a \\\"one-man truth squad.\\\" His 1994 book, Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty, received the Free Press Association\u2019s Mencken Award as Book of the Year. His Terrorism &amp; Tyranny won the Lysander Spooner \\\"Best Book on Liberty in 2003\\\" award. He received the Thomas Szasz Award for Civil Liberties work, awarded by the Center for Independent Thought and the Freedom Fund Award from the Firearms Civil Rights Defense Fund of the National Rifle Association. Bovard\u2019s writings have been publicly denounced by FBI director Louis Freeh, the Secretary of Agriculture, the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, the Postmaster General, and the chiefs of the U.S. International Trade Commission, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, as well as by many congressmen and other malcontents.\",\"sameAs\":[\"http:\\\/\\\/www.jimbovard.com\",\"https:\\\/\\\/www.facebook.com\\\/jim.bovard\",\"https:\\\/\\\/x.com\\\/jimbovard\"],\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/jimbovard.com\\\/blog\\\/author\\\/admin\\\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Bush's Signing Statement Dictatorship - James Bovard","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2006\/10\/09\/bushs-signing-statement-dictatorship\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Bush's Signing Statement Dictatorship - James Bovard","og_description":"The fine folks at Future of Freedom Foundation posted today a piece I did on Bush&#8217;s endless nullifications of federal law. 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The Wall Street Journal called Bovard \"the roving inspector general of the modern state\" and Washington Post columnist George Will called him a \"one-man truth squad.\" His 1994 book, Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty, received the Free Press Association\u2019s Mencken Award as Book of the Year. His Terrorism &amp; Tyranny won the Lysander Spooner \"Best Book on Liberty in 2003\" award. He received the Thomas Szasz Award for Civil Liberties work, awarded by the Center for Independent Thought and the Freedom Fund Award from the Firearms Civil Rights Defense Fund of the National Rifle Association. 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