i love the exclamation points in title. makes for a wide grin on the faces of those fatigued with constitutional destruction overload. ah, outrage and disbelief... seems like ages ago i could muster such reaction to the abuse of powers that be. :) On 1/4/07, Eugen Leitl <eugen@leitl.org> wrote:

... [You know those "signing statements" that Bush always signs following his signing of new legislation? (the ones that give him the right to break the law he just signed) Well on Christmas day he just gave himself the right to open our mail (regular snail mail now!) with no warrant from a judge!

[Admittedly it's alarming, but the thing that stands out to me is that we know GWB can barely string a subject and verb together on his own, so who's actually writing these things? And I doubt it's just a language problem, so who's actually coming up with the concepts? -psl]

---cut--- In July 1987, then-Representative Dick Cheney, the top Republican on the committee investigating the Iran-contra scandal, turned on his hearing room microphone and delivered, in his characteristically measured tone, a revolutionary claim... "I personally do not believe the Boland Amendment applied to the president, nor to his immediate staff," Cheney said. Most of Cheney's colleagues did not share his vision of a presidency empowered to bypass US laws governing foreign policy. The committee issued a scathing, bipartisan report accusing White House officials of "disdain for the law." Cheney refused to sign it. Instead, he commissioned his own report declaring that the real lawbreakers were his fellow lawmakers, because the Constitution "does not permit Congress to pass a law usurping Presidential power." The Iran-contra scandal was not the first time the future vice president articulated a philosophy of unfettered executive power -- nor would it be the last. The Constitution empowers Congress to pass laws regulating the executive branch, but over the course of his career, Cheney came to believe that the modern world is too dangerous and complex for a president's hands to be tied. He embraced a belief that presidents have vast "inherent" powers, not spelled out in the Constitution, that allow them to defy Congress. Cheney bypassed acts of Congress as defense secretary in the first Bush administration. And his office has been the driving force behind the current administration's hoarding of secrets, its efforts to impose greater political control over career officials, and its defiance of a law requiring the government to obtain warrants when wiretapping Americans. Cheney's staff has also been behind President Bush's record number of signing statements asserting his right to disregard laws. --end-cut--- source: http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2006/11/26/hail_to_the_chief...