Un-Signing The Signing Statements

Good:

The House rebuked President Obama for trying to ignore restrictions to international aid payments, voting overwhelmingly for an amendment forcing the administration to abide by its constraints.

House members approved an amendment by a 429-2 vote to have the Obama administration pressure the World Bank to strengthen labor and environmental standards and require a Treasury Department report on World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) activities. The amendment to a 2010 funding bill for the State Department and foreign operations was proposed by Rep. Kay Granger (R-Texas), but it received broad bipartisan support.

The conditions on World Bank and IMF funding were part of the $106 billion war supplemental bill that was passed last month. Obama, in a statement made as he signed the bill, said that he would ignore the conditions.

They would "interfere with my constitutional authority to conduct foreign relations by directing the Executive to take certain positions in negotiations or discussions with international organizations and foreign governments, or by requiring consultation with the Congress prior to such negotiations or discussions," Obama said in the signing statement [...]

President George W. Bush had used signing statements to ignore a number of provisions in bills that he signed into law, frustrating Democrats in Congress. One Bush signing statement allowed the administration to ignore a provision banning the torture of terror detainees in situations threatening the nation's security.

Frank and Rep. Mark Kirk (R-Texas) said that one way they could get presidents to stop issuing signing statements casting aside laws would be to refuse to fund their priorities. The amendment passed Thursday seeks to nullify Obama's signing statement by withholding funds from any agreement involving the Treasury Department that doesn't follow the conditions set out in the supplemental bill.

"The signal we send to the Treasury is very clear: Ignore statute at your peril," Kirk said.

As long as the executive is given a power, he or she will probably keep using it. It's up to the legislative branch to assert their authority. Of course this never happened with a Republican in the White House, as the GOP sees their role in those situations as human shields. But I really don't care about partisanship when it comes to reining in the runaway executive and restoring balance to the branches of government. Congress has a lot more power than they've been using over the years, and while this is a small point, I'm happy if it leads to signing statements going the way of the dodo bird.

...I was hinting at this, but David Waldman fleshes it out:

Pretty much as predicted, Congressional Democrats find their spine in standing up to expansive executive power as soon as there's a Democrat in the White House. Actually confronting a Republican president about it was apparently too politically difficult for them to contemplate. Why? Because Republicans would have voted against it, meaning that standing up for institutional prerogatives and the separation of powers is a politicized issue. It's "partisan bickering" when Democrats say this about Republican presidents, but "bipartisan agreement" when they say it about Democrats, because it's only when it's said about Democrats that Republicans agree that there ought to be a separation of powers.

Which of course means that such a separation only has a hope of existing as the founders intended when there's a Democrat in the White House. Which hasn't been all that often since the advent of the Nixonian "Imperial Presidency," mind you.

More Signing Statements

This was a bill, the war supplemental, which the President orchestrated, amended and whipped heavily. One provision, to provide some accountability on the funds delivered to the IMF, didn't meet to his liking. So he essentially nullified it.

The Obama administration announced in the statement it would disregard provisions of the legislation that, among other things, would compel the Obama administration to pressure the World Bank to strengthen labor and environmental standards and require the Treasury department to report to Congress on the activities of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF).

"Provisions of this bill...would interfere with my constitutional authority to conduct foreign relations by directing the Executive to take certain positions in negotiations or discussions with international organizations and foreign governments, or by requiring consultation with the Congress prior to such negotiations or discussions," Obama said in a statement.

"I will not treat these provisions as limiting my ability to engage in foreign diplomacy or negotiations," he added.

If this President or future Presidents want a line-item veto, they could ask for one. However, they wouldn't get far since such a law was declared unconstitutional back in 1996. So instead, this signing statement process gets used to nullify certain elements of a statute. Obama has used 5 in his first 5 months or so, and about the only difference from Bush is that he makes the statements public immediately instead of having them discovered later. That's transparency, but not quite the kind I can believe in.

In this case, Congress could probably fashion their desired result better in the legislation than telling the executive what to say to the World Bank. As holders of the purse strings, they could simply set limits if certain labor or environmental targets are not met. Actually, both sides are overstepping their boundaries a bit here. At some point, we need a clearer definition of the roles of the branches of government when it comes to legislation, and so hopefully the courts can provide such a remedy.

That Glorious Transparency

Big Tent Democrat flags this line in Obama's national security speech:

Funniest line of the speech - "I ran for President promising transparency, and I meant what I said. That is why, whenever possible, we will make information available to the American people so that they can make informed judgments and hold us accountable." Hell, Bush and Cheney could have said that.

Another thing Bush and Cheney could have done - in fact, would have done - is pre-empt accountability for the financial crisis by adding a singing statement to the bill authorizing an independent commission gutting their ability to collect data:

Section 5(d) of the Act requires every department, agency, bureau, board, commission, office, independent establishment, or instrumentality of the United States to furnish to the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, a legislative entity, any information related to any Commission inquiry. As my Administration communicated to the Congress during the legislative process, the executive branch will construe this subsection of the bill not to abrogate any constitutional privilege.

The Hill explains that Obama is basically threatening to withhold data and cite executive privilege if he chooses. When Darrell Issa, fercryinoutloud, can rail against your deceptiveness - and be right - you've really sunk.

Congress supported the commission idea in broad, bipartisan fashion, although a group of roughly 50 conservative Republicans opposed it in the House. On Wednesday, the main Republican supporter of the commission, Rep. Darrell Issa (Calif.), lashed out at the signing statement.

“Why is a president who talked so much about transparency now threatening to back away from it? If critical information is withheld from the inquiry on the financial crisis, its conclusions won’t have the credibility of the 9/11 Commission report,” Issa said in a statement to The Hill.

It pains me to say that Issa raises a good question, and it's not enough to say that Obama would only withhold the "proper" kind of information and release the rest. It makes a total mockery about the claims to transparency.

The Obama Signing Statement

President Obama signed the omnibus spending bill yesterday, and he came up with a program for earmark reform which is very much in the "mend it, don't end it" vein. Fair enough - I think earmarks are a fake debate, and Obama's ideas are fine (more transparency, competitive bidding) are fine. But there was also a signing statement appended to the bill. Unlike Bush's boilerplate language ("I'm the unitary executive and you can't stop me"), this signing statement was pretty detailed and thorough, and asked that five small sections of the bill be made supervisory. When these omnibus bills are combined, there are lots of conflicting pieces of information in them. And I hope this doesn't become a habit. But in the general sense, these particular points seem to be on relatively solid constitutional footing. Again, the signing statements debate is not that they ought to be completely abolished, it's that they shouldn't be used to nullify entire statutes based on flimsy reasoning. I'll add the whole signing statement below.

As I announced this past Monday, it is a legitimate constitutional function, and one that promotes the value of transparency, to indicate when a bill that is presented for Presidential signature includes provisions that are subject to well-founded constitutional objections. The Department of Justice has advised that a small number of provisions of the bill raise constitutional concerns.

Foreign Affairs. Certain provisions of the bill, in titles I and IV of Division B, title IV of Division E, and title VII of Division H, would unduly interfere with my constitutional authority in the area of foreign affairs by effectively directing the Executive on how to proceed or not proceed in negotiations or discussions with international organizations and foreign governments. I will not treat these provisions as limiting my ability to negotiate and enter into agreements with foreign nations.

United Nations Peacekeeping Missions. Section 7050 in Division H prohibits the use of certain funds for the use of the Armed Forces in United Nations peacekeeping missions under the command or operational control of a foreign national unless my military advisers have recommended to me that such involvement is in the national interests of the United States. This provision raises constitutional concerns by constraining my choice of particular persons to perform specific command functions in military missions, by conditioning the exercise of my authority as Commander in Chief on the recommendations of subordinates within the military chain of command, and by constraining my diplomatic negotiating authority. Accordingly, I will apply this provision consistent with my constitutional authority and responsibilities.

Executive Authority to Control Communications with the Congress. Sections 714(1) and 714(2) in Division D prohibit the use of appropriations to pay the salary of any Federal officer or employee who interferes with or prohibits certain communications between Federal employees and Members of Congress. I do not interpret this provision to detract from my authority to direct the heads of executive departments to supervise, control, and correct employees' communications with the Congress in cases where such communications would be unlawful or would reveal information that is properly privileged or otherwise confidential.

Legislative Aggrandizements (committee-approval requirements). Numerous provisions of the legislation purport to condition the authority of officers to spend or reallocate funds on the approval of congressional committees. These are impermissible forms of legislative aggrandizement in the execution of the laws other than by enactment of statutes. Therefore, although my Administration will notify the relevant committees before taking the specified actions, and will accord the recommendations of such committees all appropriate and serious consideration, spending decisions shall not be treated as dependent on the approval of congressional committees. Likewise, one other provision gives congressional committees the power to establish guidelines for funding costs associated with implementing security improvements to buildings. Executive officials shall treat such guidelines as advisory. Yet another provision requires the Secretary of the Treasury to accede to all requests of a Board of Trustees that contains congressional representatives. The Secretary shall treat such requests as nonbinding.

Recommendations Clause Concerns. Several provisions of the Act (including sections 211 and 224(b) of title II of Division I, and section 713 in Division A), effectively purport to require me and other executive officers to submit budget requests to the Congress in particular forms. Because the Constitution gives the President the discretion to recommend only "such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient" (Article II, section 3 of the Constitution), the specified officers and I shall treat these directions as precatory.

And Now Signing Statements

As I've said a few times, the Bush Administration so catastrophically fucked this country in seemingly limitless weighs, that the Obama Administration could be 90% on the side of the angels and still have lots of issues where they are wrong, creating an impression that they are not fulfilling the promise of change. But on the majority of issues, they are! And here's another one: ending the pernicious practice of signing statements that nullify settled Congressional law based on extreme theories of executive power, which was brought to truly epic levels under Bush and Cheney.

In recent years, there has been considerable public discussion and criticism of the use of signing statements to raise constitutional objections to statutory provisions. There is no doubt that the practice of issuing such statements can be abused. Constitutional signing statements should not be used to suggest that the President will disregard statutory requirements on the basis of policy disagreements. At the same time, such signing statements serve a legitimate function in our system, at least when based on well-founded constitutional objections. In appropriately limited circumstances, they represent an exercise of the President's constitutional obligation to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, and they promote a healthy dialogue between the executive branch and the Congress.

With these considerations in mind and based upon advice of the Department of Justice, I will issue signing statements to address constitutional concerns only when it is appropriate to do so as a means of discharging my constitutional responsibilities. In issuing signing statements, I shall adhere to the following principles:

The executive branch will take appropriate and timely steps, whenever practicable, to inform the Congress of its constitutional concerns about pending legislation. Such communication should facilitate the efforts of the executive branch and the Congress to work together to address these concerns during the legislative process, thus minimizing the number of occasions on which I am presented with an enrolled bill that may require a signing statement.

Because legislation enacted by the Congress comes with a presumption of constitutionality, I will strive to avoid the conclusion that any part of an enrolled bill is unconstitutional. In exercising my responsibility to determine whether a provision of an enrolled bill is unconstitutional, I will act with caution and restraint, based only on interpretations of the Constitution that are well-founded.

To promote transparency and accountability, I will ensure that signing statements identify my constitutional concerns about a statutory provision with sufficient specificity to make clear the nature and basis of the constitutional objection.

I will announce in signing statements that I will construe a statutory provision in a manner that avoids a constitutional problem only if that construction is a legitimate one.

Obama is essentially saying that he would raise constitutional issues BEFORE a law reached his desk. What the Bush Administration would do is negotiate a bill, and then when it passed nullify with the stroke of the pen any aspect that put a check on his executive power. Obama would give the Congress the benefit of the doubt and act with restraint in issuing signing statements, generally within the accepted practice of the previous 200-odd years. The statements typically would be used as a guideline for the Supreme Court to judge the constitutionality of a provision if it were litigated, as I understand it. That is a far cry from what essentially was a line-item veto, the way Bush used it. And the part where he writes that he would "constitutional concerns about a statutory provision with sufficient specificity to make clear the nature and basis of the constitutional objection" would be far different from the boilerplate that Bush used on over one hundred signing statements:

Bush’s postsigning statement declared that he would interpret many sections of the new law “in a manner consistent with the president’s constitutional authority to supervise the unitary executive branch.” In plain English, this means that many of the limits that Congress imposed on Bush’s power – and that he accepted when he took the money Congress appropriated – are null and void. Why? Because the president says so.

And best of all, instead of just looking forward, in this case he's looking backward.

To ensure that all signing statements previously issued are followed only when consistent with these principles, executive branch departments and agencies are directed to seek the advice of the Attorney General before relying on signing statements issued prior to the date of this memorandum as the basis for disregarding, or otherwise refusing to comply with, any provision of a statute.

In other words, Mr. Bush, your signing statements just went poof in the night.

Charlie Savage, who basically uncovered the practice of nullifying law through signing statements during the Bush Administration, has a writeup on this memorandum. And he says that Obama's perspective is consistent with his remarks on signing statements in a questionnaire Savage authored during the campaign.

Signing Statements Redux?

Barack Obama is signing the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in Denver at this hour, and I think the consensus among the progblogs is that this is a positive step for the country, if only a step. There will be a down payment on reinvesting in long-term infrastructure, education, energy and health care while providing a quick boost to the economy through direct payments, increases in unemployment insurance and food stamps, and reduction of withholding. It's a very big legislative victory.

I certainly don't like the rumblings, however, that the White House is seeking changes to the executive compensation rules in the bill, which has now passed both houses of Congress. That after-the-fact maneuvering is very reminiscent of how George Bush would ignore federal statutes and undermine American law.

Facing a stricter approach to limiting executive bonuses than it had favored, the Obama administration wants to revise that part of the stimulus package even after it becomes law, White House officials said Sunday.

While President Barack Obama plans to sign the $787 billion stimulus bill in Denver on Tuesday, his administration will seek changes in the government's approach to executive compensation, senior Obama adviser David Axelrod said in a television interview.

"We all have the same goal. We all have the same sentiment. And we want to do something that's workable, and we'll work with them to get to that point," Axelrod said on "Fox News Sunday."

They are drinking the Kool-Aid that CEOs would flee American companies (like anybody's hiring right now) and that they must be placated, because $500,000 isn't a lot of money or whatever. And they're getting a lot of special interest pressure as well. The Treasury Department could have up to a year to announce the implementation of these pay caps, which would buy time for industry to find a loophole around what is actually a well-conceived provision.

But the actual issue at hand is a side note. It's the process here that deeply concerns me. We have to say no to autocrats deciding outside the legislative process what will be made law and what will not be. Kagro X describes this well.

Whatever the differences, let's be clear about what it means that Congress has passed this set of restrictions, and President Obama is signing them into law tomorrow. Any changes he'd like to see made, he ought to seek to have made legislatively. After two weeks of seeing the stimulus bill watered down and slashed in a futile attempt to "reach out" to Republicans who all eventually gave him the finger, do you think we could maybe, possibly not have the President unilaterally take an axe to a wildly popular provision added to the package by members of his own party?

I'm not a presidential adviser, of course. But I'm thinking that maybe this ought to be approached with a bit more caution, and more signals need to be sent that the President is committed to making any fixes he wants through the legislative process. Any ambiguity isn't likely to help him when it comes time to sell another $2 trillion round of TARP funding in the coming weeks. The constant worry of Obama's most critical allies on the Hill with respect to the TARP is that Congressional oversight not fall by the wayside. If the White House's opening move on oversight is to announce its intention not only to make decisions unilaterally, but to brush aside enacted statute in doing so, we're going to be in for a bumpy ride.

Obama needs to think extremely hard about this. Failing to fulfill constitutional responsibilities to execute the laws would be catastrophic. It would render Congress as irrelevant as they were in the Bush years. We don't elect a king.

Signing Statement Expiration Dates

We've all been concerned about President Bush's disrespect of the Constitution and the separation of powers, but one interesting sidelight to it all is that, at least on the question of signing statements, the long-term effects are less severe than realized, at least in the specific sense.

Critics say the statements, which went mostly unnoticed [3] until the middle of Bush's second term, usurp Congress' constitutional right to make laws and violate the separation of powers. But hope is just around the corner for the signing statement opponents.

"They will mean nothing" once Bush leaves office, said Stephen Saltzburg, a law professor at George Washington University and member of an American Bar Association task force that studied, and ultimately condemned [4] (PDF), the practice of using signing statements to reject statutes. Presidents should veto laws they believe are unconstitutional, the task force said.

Though the statements aren't legally binding, they send the message to executive branch agencies that they may ignore certain laws, usually on the contention that they impinge on the president's constitutional authority. Agencies that have adopted such presidential advice as policy could still be affected when President-elect Barack Obama's appointees inherit the "status quo," Saltzburg said.

Neal Sonnett, a Miami lawyer who led the Bar Association task force, suggested that Obama make a general statement withdrawing the Bush signing statements to assure a clean break. But Sonnett and others believe the most conspicuous statements -- and their effects -- will be obvious to the newcomers.

Of course, the problem with signing statements wasn't really that they would settle law, but that they would embolden the executive to follow Bush in determining which parts of a statute to abide by and which to ignore. That the specific damage done washes away is a good thing, but the precedent remains. President-elect Obama would do well to completely repudiate the practice, to at least try and establish a new precedent.

Still President Bush

There are 19 days until a general election replacing George Bush (I'll wait for the cheers to die down). We all know he can still cause a lot of pain, and not just to 401(k) accounts. But there are things occurring in the shadows that aren't getting enough attention.

• He's still making signing statements exempting himself from current law.

President Bush asserted on Tuesday that he had the executive power to bypass several parts of two bills: a military authorization act and a measure giving inspectors general greater independence from White House control.

Mr. Bush signed the two measures into law. But he then issued a so-called signing statement in which he instructed the executive branch to view parts of each as unconstitutional constraints on presidential power.

• The laws he doesn't amend are really crappy.

President Bush on Monday signed into law legislation creating a copyright czar, a cabinet-level position on par with the nation's drug czar.

Two weeks ago, the House sent the president the "Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights Act" (.pdf), a measure the Senate approved days before creating a cabinet-level copyright czar charged with implementing a nationwide plan to combat piracy and "report directly to the president and Congress regarding domestic international intellectual property enforcement programs."

• He continues to break the law and ignore Congressional oversight.

Oversight Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Rep. Tom Davis (R-VA) came together today to criticize the White House for their use of executive privilege in the Valerie Plame leak scandal.

The two lawmakers called Bush's refusal to disclose the report of the FBI interview with Vice President Cheney "legally unprecedented" and "inappropriate." The committee seeks the document in order to establish the White House's role in the leak of Plame's name to the media.

• Like I said, he continues to break the law.

A draft Committee report circulated by Chairman Waxman finds that in the months before the 2006 elections, the White House Office of Political Affairs “enlisted agency heads across government in a coordinated effort to elect Republican candidates to Congress,” directing them “to make hundreds of trips – most at taxpayer expense – for the purpose of increasing the electability of Republicans.”

• And he's making rules that could have deleterious effects far into the future.

WASHINGTON -- Bush administration officials, in their last weeks in office, are pushing to rewrite a wide array of federal rules with changes or additions that could block product-safety lawsuits by consumers and states.

The administration has written language aimed at pre-empting product-liability litigation into 50 rules governing everything from motorcycle brakes to pain medicine. The latest changes cap a multiyear effort that could be one of the administration's lasting legacies, depending in part on how the underlying principle of pre-emption fares in a case the Supreme Court will hear next month [...]

These new rules can't quickly be undone by order of the next president. Federal rules usually must go through lengthy review processes before they are changed. Rulemaking at the Food and Drug Administration, where most of the new pre-emption rules have appeared, can take a year or more.

We haven't even come to the inevitable pardons. Or the illegal programs he has started and continues to run. Or the failed policies.

What a terrible President. No wonder nobody wants anything to do with him.

Just Another Postpartisan Monarch

Or perhaps, just another spoiled little rich man who is disinterested in complying with the rule of law:

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg invoked a rarely used power today not to enforce a law he deems illegal, saying he would ignore an electronic recycling bill passed by the City Council this week if his planned veto is overridden.

The mayor, on his weekly radio program on WABC-AM (770), said the bill as currently written is “totally illegal.”

“We will not enforce it,” he said. “And we don’t have to enforce it because it violates a whole bunch of federal laws on interstate commerce.”

The threat evokes the much-debated use of so-called “signing statements” by the Bush administration. In a 2007 Pulitzer Prize-winning series, Charlie Savage of The Boston Globe showed how the president has used hundreds of these statements to disobey laws passed by Congress on issues ranging from military rules and regulations to affirmative action.

In 2006, the Bloomberg administration won a battle in the state’s highest court saying the mayor does not have to enforce a law he deems to be unconstitutional. That legal fight was waged over a 2004 law passed by the City Council, after overriding the mayor’s veto, that would have required private companies that contract with the city to provide the same health care and other benefits they extend to married couples to domestic partners.

Isn't the whole Bloomberg appeal supposed to be that whole "liberal on social issues and the environment" thing?

Sounds to me like Bloomberg's idea of "getting along and working together to solve problems" is identical to the current resident of the White House.

Iraq 4-Evah

When Bush vetoed the Defense Authorization Bill because he was so concerned about this abstract issue of reparations for those who were tortured and killed at the hands of Saddam Hussein, I wondered if the real issue was a ban on permanent bases in Iraq, which was also in the bill. Well, it turns out that the Prez dusted off his signing statement pen to take care of that bit of unpleasantness:

Today, I have signed into law H.R. 4986, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008. The Act authorizes funding for the defense of the United States and its interests abroad, for military construction, and for national security-related energy programs.

Provisions of the Act, including sections 841, 846, 1079, and 1222, purport to impose requirements that could inhibit the President's ability to carry out his constitutional obligations to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, to protect national security, to supervise the executive branch, and to execute his authority as Commander in Chief. The executive branch shall construe such provisions in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the President.

These provisions include: 1) the establishment of a "Truman Commission" to look into war profiteering, 2) protection for contractors who become whistleblowers by disclosing information about profiteering and contracting abuse, 3) the need to share information with Congress (in particular the Armed Services Committee) about intelligence assessments, and finally:

SEC. 1222. LIMITATION ON AVAILABILITY OF FUNDS FOR CERTAIN PURPOSES RELATING TO IRAQ.

No funds appropriated pursuant to an authorization of appropriations in this Act may be obligated or expended for a purpose as follows:

(1) To establish any military installation or base for the purpose of providing for the permanent stationing of United States Armed Forces in Iraq.

(2) To exercise United States control of the oil resources of Iraq.

In the end, this relates to the setting of a long-term "status of forces agreement" between the United States and Iraq. Obviously there will be some permanent long-term installations for troops associated with that. But I'm trying to figure out how this works. The President is nullifying restrictions on funds for permanent bases and control of oil. But Congress provides the funding. So it would be illegal to use Iraq funds in the appropriations process toward these ends, as long as they are expressly given other functions in those bills. Otherwise, it's an illegal appropriation. However, I suspect that there are enough loopholes in those funding bills that voiding this ban is enough for the executive to impose his will on the process.

Of course, that's only true for another year. So the Democratic candidates need to make statements about whether they would uphold or repudiate this signing statement and commit to a total ban on permanent bases in Iraq and control of Iraqi oil. We know that George Bush is never going to change in his megalomania. But we deserve to know whether this will spill over into the next Administration.

Signing Statements Are Back, But With A Twist

Attached to the military appropriations bill signed by the President last month included the first signing statement since the new Congress came into power, and the details of it should cheer those who think that the Democratic takeover have achieved absolutely nothing. Because this is a kinder and gentler signing statement, a less unitary executive, who just allowed through a provision against permanent bases in Iraq which a Democratic successor would surely be pressured to enforce.

Pulitzer Prize winner Charlie Savage has the report.

In the statement, which the White House filed in the Federal Register on Nov. 13 but which initially attracted little attention, Bush challenged several requirements to provide information to Congress.

For example, one law Bush targeted requires him to give oversight committees notice before transferring US military equipment to United Nations peacekeepers.

Bush also challenged a new law that limits his ability to transfer funds lawmakers approved for one purpose to start a different program, as well as a law requiring him to keep in place an existing command structure for the Navy's Pacific fleet.

Obviously, it's distressing that Bush has reverted to the practice of trying to nullify Congressionally-mandated statutes. But look at the language that he has used to reject these portions of the law.

"The Act contains certain provisions identical to those found in prior bills passed by the Congress that might be construed to be inconsistent with my Constitutional responsibilities," Bush's statement says.

"To avoid such potential infirmities, I will interpret and construe such provisions in the same manner as I have previously stated in regard to those provisions."

This is not the "I am the commander in chief and the unitary executive and what I say goes" President of years past. This is a meeker statement, simply claiming that there are inconsistencies in the record between these and other statutes. This seems to me like something fully within the purview of the judiciary to determine which language takes precedent. And in addition, it's far less confrontational and far easier to be challenged.

And this is the real surprise:

In a further sign that the White House adopted a muted tone, the new signing statement also said nothing about two higher-profile provisions in the bill that limit presidential power: One law prohibits the military from using foreign intelligence information that was collected illegally, and the other forbids expending funds to establish permanent US military bases in Iraq.

As lawmakers drafted the bill earlier this year, the White House warned Congress that the illegal intelligence and Iraq-base provisions "impermissibly" infringed "on the president's constitutional authority" over national security and foreign affairs.

The complaints about constraining executive power are gone. The reign of President as emperor, picking and choosing the laws he likes, are gone.

Now, this is not to say that the President has suddenly decided to follow the Constitution. If he wants to appropriate funds toward building permanent bases in Iraq, he very well might. He probably doesn't have to, since most of them are already built. But the statute is now official US law. Same with preventing the military from using "illegally collected" intelligence information. And so it will not only be applied to this President, but most importantly the NEXT President.

The Democratic Congress has obviously been something of a disappointment. But you have to put this in perspective. Change in Washington moves at a glacial pace. Despite this, they have passed the first minimum wage increase in a decade, the largest student loan reform maybe ever, implemented the 9/11 Commission recommendations, instituted needed ethics reforms, and more. This coming week they will take up an energy bill that will raise fuel efficiency by 40% and add a renewable energy standard for electricity.

Now, we're seeing that the focus on Constitutional issues has actually backed up the most radical Administration in history from further destruction. We've seen that in the resignation of all the government officials engaged in some of the most horrific practices. We've seen that in the reinstitution of Senate oversight in the US Attorney process. And now, we've seen it in the tempering of signing statements. Maybe the dark legacy of increasing executive power will be stalled, after all.

This is in no way redeems the Democratic Congress for all their missteps; if anything, the man most responsible for this backtrack on signing statements is the author Charlie Savage, who did a great deal to put this in public view. But it should be a reminder that elections actually do have consequences.

Just Makes Me Sad

I agree that it really is sad that we have to create an American anti-torture act to police American interrogators and ensure that they stop torturing. The world of early 2001 would literally not be able to conceive of the need for such a law.

We urge you to join us in cosponsoring “The American Anti-Torture Act of 2007” to ensure a uniform, minimum standard for interrogations of detainees by the U.S. government. The American Anti-Torture Act ensures that individuals in U.S. custody are not tortured, a core standard already embodied in the Army Field Manual. In doing so, it reasserts basic American values as a basis for government action.

Congress took an essential step toward prohibiting torture by American personnel with the adoption of the McCain Amendment, the first part of which requires the Department of Defense to adhere to the Army Field Manual when interrogating detainees[1]. The Amendment had overwhelming bipartisan support. It was passed by a Republican-controlled Congress, winning the votes of 46 Republicans and 44 Democrats in the Senate and 107 Republicans and 200 Democrats in the House. The American Anti-Torture Act simply extends this first part of the McCain Amendment to all U.S. agencies.

The American Anti-Torture Act would thus ensure a single, uniform, baseline standard for all interrogations conducted on persons in the custody of, or under the effective control of, the U.S. Government. The bill would clarify that interrogation techniques that are prohibited for use by the military’s own field manual on interrogations are similarly prohibited if used by the CIA or other government agencies. Like the McCain Amendment, the bill would not apply to individuals in custody under a criminal or immigration law of the United States.

This is obviously in response to the revelations that the 2004 McCain Amendment was essentially nullified by both signing statement and legal opinion inside the Office of Legal Counsel.

It still blows my mind that this needs to be said. Torture doesn't work. It creates false confessions and other dubious intelligence, puts our own troops at risk, becomes a recruiting point for Al Qaeda, and eliminates our moral authority around the world.

Just Weights And Measures

Yesterday I managed to get myself to services for Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. The familiar rituals and rites of Judaism can be comforting but often lapse into rote recitation. But yesterday, the rabbi's sermon woke me up and put a new spin on the moral code that underpins all humanity, which is at the heart of not only Jewish teaching, but the foundational premises of our country, principles we are rapidly losing over the course of the Bush Presidency.

The rabbi talked about a little-remarked-upon section of the Old Testament. Leviticus is filled with a laundry list of commandments and guidelines for life in Biblical times. One section focuses on "just weights and measures."

35 Ye shall do no unrighteousness in judgment, in meteyard, in weight, or in measure. 36 Just balances, just weights, a just ephah, and a just hin, shall ye have: I am the LORD your God, which brought you out of the land of Egypt.

An ephah is a unit of dry measure, roughly equivalent to about 23 liters. The way that business was conducted in this time was that every shopkeeper would have their own ephah, and their own stone, and would parcel out portions of products based on how they filled the ephah or balanced against the stone. It was stressed in the Old Testament that you have ONE ephah, and that it be clean and untainted, so that the measure was the same everywhere anyone traveled. What was commanded was that you never substitute "ephah v'ephah": having one measure for some people, and a different measure for others.

The rabbi made a strong statement paralleling this commandment for just measures with our present policies on immigration. "You deal with the person in front of you, and you have mercy on them and deal with them and provide for them and care for them as you would anyone else." This is not a political accomodation but a moral imperative; to do any different would be to put our thumb on the scale. And then the rabbi paused, and said, "I should stop there but I won't. For I must not be silent about torture." This is also a violation of "ephah v'ephah." He said that locking up suspects indefinitely and coercing their confessions through prohibited tactics is a sin against God, an "abomination," as the Old Testament calls it, and one that was held in the highest seriousness to Hebrew scholars. "We know a lot about that other thing called abomination," he said, a clear reference to the oft-used line by conservative Christians that homosexuality is an "abomination." Unlike sexuality, using separate ephahs for separate people CANNOT be rectified through penance. It is as serious a sin as there is in Judaism. And this is perhaps because it gets at the very heart of the measure of a man. If we cannot treat others the same, no matter what the circumstances, we have no basis to call ourselves moral human beings.

The United States has their own "ephah," called the Constitution. We cannot profess to follow the rule of law while breaking it whenever convenient. We not only damage our credibility, but we do violence to the ancient concept of just weights and measures. For six and a half long years we have seen an Administration throw morality out the window while claiming to have the word of God on their side. They have eliminated the Great Writ of habeas corpus, they have spied on their fellow citizens without warrants, they have incarcerated terror suspects at Guantanamo and secret prisons indefinitely and without charges, they have nullified federal statutes through the questionably legal means of signing statements, and more. And we cannot stand idly by while they use one ephah for their friends and allies, and another ephah for anyone they deem a threat, be it militarily or politically. We must stand up for just measures.

This week, the ACLU of Southern California, in partnership with Calitics, is launching The Campaign for Our Constitution. It is an aggressive effort to restore our Constitution and our civil liberties and reverse the extreme policies of the Bush Administration that have made us less safe and called into question just what freedom we're supposed to be fighting for abroad. Bloggers, constitutional scholars and activists are joining together in the fight to recapture basic constitutional values. There are going to be a lot of action items you can take in the future, but for now I want to give you the schedule for the coming weeks.

The campaign officially kicks off Monday, Sept. 17, with a conference call with Salon.com contributor and New York Times bestselling author Glenn Greenwald. He will discuss the future of the Constitution with Cenk Uygur, co-host of Air America’s “Young Turks” morning show, and take members’ questions. The conference call is open to anyone who RSVPs through www.ourconstitution.net.

In the next month, the campaign will hold conference calls on Sept. 20 with Dr. Drew Westen, an Emory University psychologist, Huffington Post contributor, and author of “The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation” and on Oct. 4 with John Dean, former White House counsel for Richard Nixon and author of the new book “Broken Government: How Republican Rule Destroyed the Legislative, Executive and Judicial Branches,” just released by Viking Press. There also will be a free screening and discussion with director Robert Greenwald (“Outfoxed,” “Unconstitutional”) in Hollywood on Sept. 25.

“Southern Californians are itching for a fight,” said ACLU/SC field director Susanne Savage. “The U.S. Constitution is our core issue. We intend to lead a campaign that will expose the sad truths about our government’s policies, inspire people to act and give our electeds the political cover they need to stop legislating out of fear.”

There is no more important issue for our country moving forward than to regain the sense of justice and truth that's been sorely missing for too long. Please visit OurConstitution.net and see what you can do to help. We can and must return this nation to one where there are just weights and measures.

Small Glimmers of Hope

In the aftermath of the outrage of the Libby disgrace, there does appear to be a small turnaround in American Iraq policy being negotiated, and this time, it is the White House that is arguing from a position of weakness.

Gates made headlines during a trip to Hawaii a month ago when he called a decades-long U.S. troop presence in Iraq "a great idea." Now, reports the Wall Street Journal, Gates figures the path to Congressional assent for an enduring, South Korea-style stay in Iraq is to come up with near-term troop reductions. It's basically a trade-off: cut the surge short in order to stay in Iraq indefinitely.

In and of itself, this is a terrible idea. Our troops in Iraq permanently would have essentially no mission and would be exposed to a far more chaotic situation than South Korea ever was. Furthermore, the manpower strain on the Army is such that they can't keep up this surge anyway without a draft, and the troops will be drawn down by next spring all by themselves, so why would Congress give up something additional (permanent bases) for something due to happen by default?

But let's look at the big picture. Obviously, support for the war is really cratering on Capitol Hill, and at least the Secretary of Defense understands that. Richard Lugar's call for a drawdown, along similar lines as Gates actually, is a signal that Republicans who want there to be a party for them in this next generation are coalescing around a pullback of troops. And with Gates going hat in hand to Congress to argue for a permanent presence, he's clearly accepting the reality of what's happening in Iraq and trying to salvage something out of it. Whether he has backing in the White House is unclear. But this is a very high-level official in the White House admitting that the surge is essentially doomed. That's important.

Gates is also continuing to push to close Gitmo and change the entire system for trying detainees, before the judicial system, which has agreed to hear a challenge to the Military Commissions Act, changes it for them.

Essentially, the administration would propose legislation that would result in dividing the estimated 375 Guantánamo detainees into three legal categories. The one that would call for legislative action would include detainees like Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the September 2001 attacks, and others whose trials would risk exposing intelligence operations. This group, estimated at two dozen to 50, would be placed indefinitely in military brigs on American soil.

A second group would also be moved to the United States, most likely to face trial in military courts, but perhaps with more legal guarantees than in the current military tribunal system.

The third, and largest, group would consist of detainees to be released to their home countries.

This would still be unacceptable to me, as there would still be an element of denying habeas corpus and indefinite detention without charges involved. It's still worth pursuing because Guantanamo's elimination would send a message of change to the world, and like in the Iraq negotiations, the White House is in the weak position, knowing that Gitmo must go and trying to figure out an acceptable alternative.

This all possibly runs into a brick wall once Fourthbranch gets his mitts on it, but Democrats who want to end our involvement in Iraq and restore Constitutional rights have an opportunity to drive the debate here if they want it.

UPDATE: Arlen Specter gives another line of attack.

Frustrated by the Bush administration’s continued use of presidential signing statements to challenge or ignore provisions of Congressionally approved legislation, Senate Judiciary ranking member Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) has reintroduced legislation to rein in President Bush’s ability to use the tactic.

Specter, who has long been a critic of Bush’s use of signing statements, quietly introduced his Presidential Signing Statements Act of 2007 on Friday.

“The president cannot use a signing statement to rewrite the words of a statute nor can he use a signing statement to selectively nullify those provisions he does not like,” Specter said in a floor statement.

If the Democrats in Congress can't stand up for their own lawmaking powers, they really should pack it up and go home.

Priority is Job #1

I do agree with this LA Times op-ed that the Democrats are stepping up in some ways, particularly on gun control and energy, in recent weeks. And the fact that they plan to investigate Cheney's signing statements, which according to one report have nullified 30% of all Congressional laws last year, is also encouraging.

But nobody is going to give the Democrats in Congress credit for a job well done until they do something about Iraq. They were the ones that responded to public sentiment by announcing it as a priority - and now they have to deliver. This is the Pandora's Box they've opened up, such that nothing else they do will be seen as sufficient to the immediate problem at hand.

Cheney, Part II

Here we learn that Cheney was at the heart of the soul-deadening practice of torture to extract information from our enemies.

Cheney and his allies, according to more than two dozen current and former officials, pioneered a novel distinction between forbidden "torture" and permitted use of "cruel, inhuman or degrading" methods of questioning. They did not originate every idea to rewrite or reinterpret the law, but fresh accounts from participants show that they translated muscular theories, from Yoo and others, into the operational language of government.

A backlash beginning in 2004, after reports of abuse leaked out of Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison and Guantanamo Bay, brought what appeared to be sharp reversals in courts and Congress -- for both Cheney's claims of executive supremacy and his unyielding defense of what he called "robust interrogation."

But a more careful look at the results suggests that Cheney won far more than he lost. Many of the harsh measures he championed, and some of the broadest principles undergirding them, have survived intact but out of public view.

Yes folks, even when the forces of justice and democracy feel they have won, behind the scenes they have not. Because Cheney is like a marionette at controlling levers of power. He uses some of the most skillful lawyerly tactics to give the appearance of staying within the law while essentially gutting it:

Geneva rules forbade not only torture but also, in equally categorical terms, the use of "violence," "cruel treatment" or "humiliating and degrading treatment" against a detainee "at any time and in any place whatsoever." The War Crimes Act of 1996 made any grave breach of those restrictions a U.S. felony [Read the act]. The best defense against such a charge, Addington wrote, would combine a broad presidential direction for humane treatment, in general, with an assertion of unrestricted authority to make exceptions.

The vice president's counsel proposed that President Bush issue a carefully ambiguous directive. Detainees would be treated "humanely and, to the extent appropriate and consistent with military necessity, in a manner consistent with the principles of" the Geneva Conventions. When Bush issued his public decision two weeks later, on Feb. 7, 2002, he adopted Addington's formula -- with all its room for maneuver -- verbatim.

And so we get a definition of torture that equates it only with organ failure or death, enabling any over treatment to be allowable. As it turns out, Cheney had his fingers all over this redefinition, and his own lawyer, David Addington, was the ghost writer of the infamous "torture memo":

The vice president's lawyer advocated what was considered the memo's most radical claim: that the president may authorize any interrogation method, even if it crosses the line of torture. U.S. and treaty laws forbidding any person to "commit torture," that passage stated, "do not apply" to the commander in chief, because Congress "may no more regulate the President's ability to detain and interrogate enemy combatants than it may regulate his ability to direct troop movements on the battlefield."

That same day, Aug. 1, 2002, Yoo signed off on a second secret opinion, the contents of which have never been made public. According to a source with direct knowledge, that opinion approved as lawful a long list of specific interrogation techniques proposed by the CIA -- including waterboarding, a form of near-drowning that the U.S. government classified as a war crime in 1947. The opinion drew the line against one request: threatening to bury a prisoner alive.

Apparently, everyone in the White House is afraid of Cheney, so when they have a problem with what he's done, they go beat up on Fredo:

On June 8, 2004, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell learned of the two-year-old torture memo for the first time from an article in The Washington Post. According to a former White House official with firsthand knowledge, they confronted Gonzales together in his office.

Rice "very angrily said there would be no more secret opinions on international and national security law," the official said, adding that she threatened to take the matter to the president if Gonzales kept them out of the loop again. Powell remarked admiringly, as they emerged, that Rice dressed down the president's lawyer "in full Nurse Ratched mode," a reference to the ward chief of a mental hospital in the 1975 film "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest."

Neither of them took their objections to Cheney, the official said, a much more dangerous course.

What kind of mutated government have we constructed where the Vice President not only walls off his office to the snooping eyes and ears of Congressional and executive oversight, but his own peers are too afraid of him to confront him, and so take out their frustrations on lower-level functionaries while Cheney goes behind all of their backs and essentially runs the government, his hand up the back of his empty-suit ventriloquist's dummy called the President? More than anything, this is an exposure of the cracks in the Constitutional fabric, demanding that the entire structure of it be reviewed to prevent this kind of unaccountability from ever happening again.

The Vice President was writing our intelligence laws. He was determining how far military interrogators and the CIA could go to attempt to extract information. He was fighting, and winning, turf battles with practically every federal agency in the government.

The other problem with this, of course, is that Cheney is a dangerously stupid man, who has constructed a view of executive power that doesn't exist, and has convinced himself and his acolytes that it gives him unllimited control. So when these theories are brought into court, like in Hamdi or Hamdan or Rasul they are always overturned. However, Cheney could always fall back on his secret maneuvering inside the government to come up with ways to circumvent any restriction.

On Oct. 5, 2005, the Senate voted 90 to 9 in favor of McCain's Detainee Treatment Act, which included the Geneva language. It was, by any measure, a rebuke to Cheney. Bush signed the bill into law. "Well, I don't win all the arguments," Cheney told the Wall Street Journal [...]

The final measure confined only the Defense Department to the list of interrogation techniques specified in a new Army field manual. No techniques were specified for CIA officers, who were forbidden only in general terms to employ "cruel" or "inhuman" methods. Crucially, the new law said those words would be interpreted in light of U.S. constitutional law. That made a big difference to Cheney [...]

Eager to put detainee scandals behind them, Bush's advisers spent days composing a statement in which the president would declare support for the veto-proof bill on detainee treatment. Hours before Bush signed it into law on Dec. 30, 2005, Cheney's lawyer intercepted the accompanying statement "and just literally takes his red pen all the way through it," according to an official with firsthand knowledge.

Addington substituted a single sentence. Bush, he wrote, would interpret the law "in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the President to supervise the unitary executive branch and as Commander in Chief."

Yep, the familiar signing statement language comes from Cheney.

Read the whole thing and weep for our country.

A New Generation of Progressive Leadership

Democrats and particularly bloggers like to take the piss out of Barack Obama and John Edwards and the rest of our slate of Democratic Presidential candidates a lot; I've joined them. But it's undeniable that we're seeing a completely different dynamic in 2007 that we saw in 2003 leading up to the primaries. Then, centrist pro-gun fiscally conservative Howard Dean was seen as a wild-eyed liberal just to the left of Karl Marx. The range of topics was extremely narrow, and the solutions expressed even narrower. Today, we see a broad progressive agenda espoused by everyone - even Hillary Clinton - and practically everyone in this race has pitched their message in a more progressive way than even Dean. (OK, not Biden, but he represents the past)

The candidates' liberal chorus about the war in Iraq, gay rights, healthcare and labor issues was a testament to the Democratic left wing's growing strength since the Republican rout in the 2006 midterm election.

The White House hopefuls called for broad healthcare reform. All embraced allowing gays to serve in the military, a step to the left of President Clinton's policy of "don't ask, don't tell."

The rival candidates also paid homage to their party's deep antiwar sentiment by competing for the mantle of being the most strongly opposed to the war in Iraq [...]

At a time when many Republicans are dissatisfied with their presidential candidates, the mood at the twin forums illustrated the energy and high hopes coursing through liberal ranks.

"There's enthusiasm and optimism that someone in this room will be elected president," said Wayne Holland Jr., head of the Utah Democratic Party who attended the conference of liberal activists organized by the Campaign for America's Future. "There's a confidence I've never seen."

We begged, pleaded, and cajoled Democrats to emphasize a true politics of contrast in 2004 and 2006. We urged them to be bold and not passive or cautious. Now we're just starting to see the fruits of that, at least on the campaign trail (in Congress is another story, though I think they're beginning to get the message as well). People in this country are starving for change and leadership; that's why they're so disgusted with Congress right now, because it appears unwilling or unable to challenge George Bush.

But candidates on the stump ARE offering a leadership agenda. Barack Obama offered one of the boldest good government proposals in recent memory today, and he framed it in terms of a regrettable American past that we are slipping into again.

As factories multiplied and profits grew, the winnings of the new economy became more and more concentrated in the hands of a few robber barons, railroad tycoons and oil magnates.

It was known as the Gilded Age, and it was made possible by a government that played along. From the politicians in Washington to the big city machines, a vast system of payoffs and patronage, scandal and corruption kept power in the hands of the few while the workers who streamed into the new factories found it harder and harder to earn a decent wage or work in a safe environment or get a day off once in awhile.
The importance of this cannot be overstated. Preventing and even discouraging partipation in the political system are important tools of the entrenched interests in society. If people can't or won't change the system, the system becomes a tool for preserving injustice instead of eradicating it [...]

From Jack Abramoff to Tom Delay, from briberies to indictments, the scandals that have plagued Washington over the last few years have been too numerous to recall.

But their most troubling aspect goes far beyond the headlines that focus on the culprits and their crimes. It's an entire culture in Washington – some of it legal, some of it not – that allows this to happen. Because what's most outrageous is not the morally offensive conduct on behalf of these lobbyists and legislators, but the morally offensive laws and decisions that get made as a result.

The specific policies are numerous, but they include banning political appointees from working on anything related to their prior employer, ending no-bid contracting abuse, banning gifts to executive branch employees, enforcing the Hatch Act which bans government officials from engaging in partisan activities, ELMINATING SIGNING STATEMENTS, allowing for public comment on all bills before signage, conducting regulatory business and federal earmarking in public, and more. Obama is a candidate with a message of changing our politics, and all of these proposals, many of which he advocated before coming to Washington, all get at a drastic change from the tarnished legacy of the Bush era and a restoration of the principles of good government and respect for the Constitution. Even Ralph Nader's old group gave it a thumbs-up. You can see the speech he gave here.

We have another Presidential candidate, John Edwards, who is the first since Lyndon Johnson, really, to talk about the shame of poverty in America and advocate for those voiceless poor who have no access to the levers of power. Because he happens to be wealthy and wants to be President so he can do something about this issue, he takes a lot of heat from a clueless media, like this story today in the New York Times, alleging that Edwards' anti-poverty nonprofit was somehow used for nefarious purposes. Never mind the fact that The Times never bothered to talk to any poor people that were helped by Edwards' nonprofit. If you just look at what the Paper of Record thinks is dastardly - going abroad to talk with Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, and criss-crossing the country helping build unions and talking about poverty - it doesn't seem all that untoward. In fact, it seems pretty impressive:

Indeed, this all seems like an extremely successful venture. Edwards raised some money to fight poverty. He used a certain amount of that money to finance his own pre-presidential campaigning, which was entirely focused on poverty reduction. During that campaigning, he spent an enormous amount of time...talking about poverty, and restoring its place in the national political discussion. Given that the sum of money we're talking about is $1.3 million, how has this not been an extraordinarily effective anti-poverty center? Granted, among its methods were to enable a national politician to continually raise the issue's profile through his personal advocacy, but isn't that what folks donating to a John Edwards poverty center were expecting? And hasn't Edwards -- who still brings up poverty in his speeches, just released a book on the subject, and whose efforts spurred Matt Bai to write a New York Times Magazine cover story on the reemergence of the issue in the national political discourse -- proven very, very effective? If you care about poverty, this seems like $1.3 million well spent.

It's clear to me from these examples that we have a new generation of progressive leadership, one that is understanding that in a dangerous world, in the aftermath of a disastrous Presidency, we cannot be timid, we cannot be cowed, we must be strong and principled and tell the nation exactly how we can change this country and make an impact on people's lives. I'll leave the last word to E.J. Dionne, who wrote this admirable piece today:

cliches die hard, so you hear such 20-year-old questions as: "Are Democrats moving too far to the left?" or "Will Democrats abandon the center?"

This approach is about abstractions, not concrete political problems, and it misses the dynamic in American public life, which is the move away from the right and a discrediting of the conservative era. The political "center" of today is not where the "center" was even five years ago.

That's why every leading Democratic candidate for president chose to appear at this week's "Take Back America" conference organized by the Campaign for America's Future, the leading group on the party's progressive end [...]

None of this means that the country would replace the fiercely ideological politics of the right with strident leftism. On the contrary, the reaction against conservatism is being fed by two streams -- a move left by one part of the electorate, and a frustration with ideological politics altogether by another part.

It's why New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, flirting with an independent run for the presidency while denying he's doing so, hit a responsive chord when he declared this week that "good ideas should take precedence over rigid adherence to any particular political ideology."

But the "good ideas" that voters are demanding mostly have to do with problems that have been framed by the left, not the right: the need to disengage from Iraq, to create health security, to ease economic inequalities. It's time to update our sense of where the political center lies and to adjust our view of "the left" accordingly.

The local Air America station has a new tagline: "Progressive, the new mainstream." I'm beginning to think that they're right.

The Walls Are Caving In

I think I know why the President tried to run over the press corps with a bulldozer yesterday. He was acting out because there's so much going on around him that is damaging.

Just a few blocks from the White House, Scooter Libby is facing a jury in a case that, whatever the outcome, has painted a picture to this point of an Administration determined to go to war at all costs, and determined to punish anyone who got in their way, no matter if they had to break laws or reveal classified information to do it. And this mentality has seeped into all other aspects of the Presidency, only now there's a Democratic Congress that wants to get to the bottom of things.

Today John Conyers announced that he would investigate the use of Presidential signing statements to nullify Congressional legislation:

“We are not going to take no for an answer,” said Conyers, lambasting Bush’s use of the statements to sidestep the law.

He vowed to demand answers from the White House about its intention to ignore the ban on torture when needed and its right to open domestic mail when needed.

The White House has long defended the practice of using the statements as a way to express an opinion about legislation.

The Administration has already shown its willingness to respond to threats like these (in the back of my mind I feel like they respect it somehow) by caving on the release of the judgment of the FISA court in the domestic spying case:

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales expanded Congress' access Wednesday to classified documents detailing the government's domestic spying program but still didn't satisfy several lawmakers demanding information about surveillance.

Investigators' applications, legal briefs and orders issued by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court are now open to the two leaders of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Gonzales said.

Two weeks ago, the panel -- led by Democratic Chairman Patrick Leahy of Vermont and Republican Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania -- criticized the attorney general for refusing to answer specific questions about the secret court's new oversight of the controversial program [...]

Leahy and Specter both said they welcomed the Bush administration's decision to show them the documents, which could give insight on how judges on the secret court consider evidence when approving government requests to spy on people in the United States who have suspected links to al-Qaida.

But Leahy said he will decide after he reviews the papers whether further oversight or legislative action is necessary. Specter stopped short of calling for them to be released publicly but said "there ought to be the maximum disclosure to the public, consistent with national security procedures."

That's a really big deal. In just a week or so, we've gone from the executive branch unwilling to even stop the illegal wiretapping or comply with the FISA court, to compliance and release of the opinion. This is clearly being done to evade responsibility for past lawbreaking. In fact, the Justice Department is asking the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals not only to drop the case they're ruling on (an appeal of Judge Taylor's decision that the wiretapping is illegal and must cease), but to vacate it entirely, annul it, blot it out like it never existed so they would be free of any legal ruling that contradicts with their radical view of executive power.

But there are so many other examples of lawbreaking, the White House is getting it on all sides. An audit by the Inspector General for Iraq reconstruction details the waste of taxpayer dollars being thrown down a hole somewhere in Baghdad:

The U.S. government wasted tens of millions of dollars in Iraq reconstruction aid, including scores of unaccounted-for weapons and an unused camp for housing police trainers that has an Olympic-size swimming pool, investigators say.

The quarterly audit by Stuart Bowen Jr., the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, is the latest to paint a grim picture of waste, fraud and frustration in an Iraq war and reconstruction effort that has cost taxpayers more than $300 billion.

"The security situation in Iraq continues to deteriorate, hindering progress in all reconstruction sectors and threatening the overall reconstruction effort," according to the 579-page report, which was being released today.

The report says the State Department paid $43.8 million to contractor DynCorp International to build the residential camp for police trainers outside Baghdad's Adnan Palace grounds that has stood empty for months. About $4.2 million of the money was improperly spent on 20 VIP trailers and an Olympic-size pool, all ordered by the Iraqi Interior Ministry but never authorized by the United States.

My Rep., Henry Waxman, will hold hearings in the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on this waste, fraud and abuse, and Paul Bremer will testify. That'll be another day of heartburn for the White House spinners. The Army's investigating contractor malfeasance too. And the Defense Department's Inspector General is finding that the President doesn't support the troops where it counts:

The Inspector General for the Defense Dept. is concerned that the U.S. military has failed to adequately equip soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, especially for nontraditional duties such as training Iraqi security forces and handling detainees, according to a summary of a new audit obtained by BusinessWeek [...]

The Inspector General found that the Pentagon hasn't been able to properly equip the soldiers it already has. Many have gone without enough guns, ammunition, and other necessary supplies to "effectively complete their missions" and have had to cancel or postpone some assignments while waiting for the proper gear, according to the report from auditors with the Defense Dept. Inspector General's office. Soldiers have also found themselves short on body armor, armored vehicles, and communications equipment, among other things, auditors found.

"As a result, service members performed missions without the proper equipment, used informal procedures to obtain equipment and sustainment support, and canceled or postponed missions while waiting to receive equipment," reads the executive summary dated Jan. 25. Service members often borrowed or traded with each other to get the needed supplies, according to the summary.

Pentagon officials did not immediately return phone calls seeking comment.

The audit supports news reports and other evidence that U.S. troops have been stretched too thin or have performed tasks for which they were ill-prepared. It is likely to add fuel to the opposition to President George W. Bush's decision to send more troops to Iraq in an effort to quell the violence there.

I don't ever want to hear a thing about how Democrats don't support the troops, when they're practically being sent out into a target zone with a wool cap for a helmet and a windbreaker for body armor. It's a special kind of sickness to under-equip soldiers for "the greatest ideological struggle of our times." The more money that has to be put into the sausage, the less that the defense contractors can take for themselves, I guess.

This relentless investigation and oversight doesn't even stop at the water's edge:

Arrest warrants have been issued for 13 people in connection with the alleged CIA-orchestrated kidnapping of a German citizen in the agency's extraordinary rendition program, a Munich prosecutor said Wednesday.

Prosecutor Christian Schmidt-Sommerfeld said the warrants were issued in the last few days. He did not say for whom the warrants were issued, but indicated a statement would be issued later Wednesday.

Extraordinary rendition is a practice in which the U.S. government sends foreign terror suspects to third countries for interrogation.

Munich prosecutors have previously said that they had received from Spanish investigators the names of several U.S. secret agents believed to be involved in the kidnapping of Khaled al-Masri, a German citizen of Lebanese descent.

Never mind the extreme pressure on the subject of the surge, where even the most devoted Bush defenders aren't giving the plan much more than six months to work.

Things are busting out all over, and this President is slowly becoming isolated and pressed at all sides. They ran on a radical theory of government and power for six years, and lost the trust of virtually the whole world. This is the result of acting the part of a cowboy-king.