\n
This isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t really news any more, but it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s still worth mentioning.<\/p>\n
Presidents occasionally write a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153signing statement\u00e2\u20ac\u009d when they sign a bill into law. The gist might be something along the lines of, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the law is ok, but there are parts of it that I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think are Constitutional, and therefore I reserve the right to not obey those parts.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
Importantly, it doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t mean that the president definitely won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t obey the law, but it does mean that he believes he has the Constitutional right not to. Whether, and how often, that belief translates into actually breaking the law is anyone\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s guess.<\/p>\n
Bill Clinton, in his eight years in office, signed about 140 of those statements.<\/p>\n
It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s kind of the wrong way to go about it, isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t it? Seems to me that if something\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s wrong with the bill, you veto it, or fight about it. You don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t sign it into law, with an asterisk saying that you may only follow part of it.<\/p>\n
But I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know. Since Reagan, that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s apparently been an accepted part of the president\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s arsenal. Bush Sr. did it 232 times in his four years. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a much higher rate than Clinton\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s, and raises the old eyebrows a bit, but it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s still small-fry compared to the current president.<\/p>\n
Bush, the current president, has written (or at least signed) 750 of these babies in about 6 years in office. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s more than every other president combined. And this is with a congress that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s dominated by his own party!<\/p>\n
What\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s going on? Is this defensible at all? 750 laws that Bush may not bother to follow? Has the Republican Congress really passed 750 unconstitutional laws, or has the Executive branch decided to not even pretend to play by the rules? How can this happen 750 times?<\/p>\n
[This was originally reported in the <\/span>Boston Globe<\/a>, but you can see the article <\/span>without registering here<\/a>.] <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t really news any more, but it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s still worth mentioning. Presidents occasionally write a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153signing statement\u00e2\u20ac\u009d when they sign a bill into law. The gist might be something along the lines of, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the law is ok, but there are parts of it that I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think are Constitutional, and therefore I reserve the right […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-56","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-law","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=56"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=56"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=56"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=56"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}