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How To Neutralize
"Signing Statements"
There has been a challenge to Presidential "signing statements," and it
should be recalled now. Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) introduced the Presidential
Signing Statements Act of 2006 on July 26, 2006. That bill would: Instruct all
state and federal courts to ignore presidential signing statements. ("No State
or Federal court shall rely on or defer to a presidential signing statement as a
source of authority.")
Specter’s bill would instruct the Supreme Court to allow the U.S. Senate or
U.S. House of Representatives to file suit in order to determine the
Constitutionality of signing statements. The bill was referred to the Senate
Judiciary Committee, which Specter formerly chaired, on the day it was
introduced, and there it withered in the GOP Congress, even though it was put
forward by a Republican senator.
As with all un-passed bills, its very existence expired with the end of the
109th United States Congress on 9 December 2006.
File it again, Democrats.
There has not been a direct case on "signing statements" before the Supreme
Court. Get one to the high court now, before the members are all conservatives.
Advisory groups have said they doubt the "signing statements" are truly lawful.
But advisory boards make no laws. This needs to be made into understandable law
quickly.
If the high court approves "signing statements," the legislature has to make
new law – perhaps a change to the Constitution – to wrest this absolute power
from the executive’s hands. If such ‘signing statements’ cannot be curbed any
other way, that may well be the only means left to make America once again a
nation ruled by law and not by one man, the president.
It really does not matter whether that president is Republican, Democratic or
of some other political persuasion; if this is allowed to stand, the president
becomes an individual with boundless power, he transcends all rules. Once he or
she has that power, we are no longer the United States. That, Speaker Pelosi, is
by far the most important mission the Congress faces. Democrats have
accomplished nothing as long as "signing statements" reign supreme over the
actions of the legislative branch.
Now, while the Democrats have a Senate majority of one vote, is the time to
get this done. That single vote majority might be the only thing that saves
America from sliding into dictatorship.
February, 2007
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