The big papers finally write opinions (op-eds) about the Huge story in the Boston Globe last Sunday (read here if you missed the piece about bush's 750 signing statements avering that he doesn't have to follow the laws he signs into law: http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2006/04/30/bush_challenges_hundreds_of_laws/ )I am not sure that they have written news stories based on Savage's article - but at least the topic gets a mention. Let's take a looksee at how their readers are getting introduced to this issue which threatens our Constitutional system of government:
The NYT is stong, well kinda. Doesn't mention how this is in outright rejection of the U.S. Constitution until the last line. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/05/opinion/05fri1.html?_r=1&hp&oref=sloginVeto? Who Needs a Veto?
Published: May 5, 2006
One of the abiding curiosities of the Bush administration is that after more than five years in office, the president has yet to issue a veto. No one since Thomas Jefferson has stayed in the White House this long without rejecting a single act of Congress. Some people attribute this to the Republicans' control of the House and the Senate, and others to Mr. Bush's reluctance to expend political capital on anything but tax cuts for the wealthy and the war in Iraq. Now, thanks to a recent article in The Boston Globe, we have a better answer.
President Bush doesn't bother with vetoes; he simply declares his intention not to enforce anything he dislikes. Charlie Savage at The Globe reported recently that Mr. Bush had issued more than 750 "presidential signing statements" declaring he wouldn't do what the laws required. Perhaps the most infamous was the one in which he stated that he did not really feel bound by the Congressional ban on the torture of prisoners.
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The Post has a piece by Michael Kinsley - which explains very little about the issue (and in quick read I don't even think he pointed out that bush has a way of 'ruling' a proposed law as being unconstitutional - by vetoing it) - suggests that since the Globe didn't say whether or not the admin has acted upon his statements or it is just stating 'his point of view' so thus it must be that there aren't actions - is the implication. Kinsley goes to another (interesting - but side point) area pointing out that while bush is staking the right to ignore parts of laws and the constitution (isn't given this novel use of power) - bush is at the same time going after papers/reporters 'leaking' in a way that is really odd. In short, the Post's 'coverage' (or inclusion of an op-ed on the topic) doesn't highlight the implications of the 750 signing statements for our system in any serious way.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/04/AR2006050401459.htmlConstitutional Cafeteria
By Michael Kinsley
Friday, May 5, 2006; Page A19
Last Sunday's Boston Globe carried an alarming 4,000-word front-page article about President Bush and the Constitution. It seems that Bush has asserted the right to ignore "vast swaths of the law" simply because he thinks that these laws are unconstitutional.
The article is specifically about "signing statements," in which the president offers his interpretation of an act of Congress as he signs it into law. This was an innovation of the Reagan administration, intended to give courts something other than a law's legislative history -- that is, Congress's side of the story -- in any future dispute. Bush often signs a law and at the same time says that parts of it are unconstitutional. Sneaky!
The Globe does not report what it thinks a president ought to do when called upon to enforce or obey a law he or she believes to be unconstitutional. It's not an easy question. The power of judges to have the last word in constitutional interpretation is not explicitly in the Constitution. The logic is that every officer of the government has an obligation to follow the Constitution, and courts get the last word because their words literally come last in any dispute. The Constitution is like a hot potato, and the judges are holding it when the music stops.
(salin's note - this is the paragraph where the oped starts soft pedalling the story - interesting read in terms of studying navel gazing by punditry type journalists).
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Over at the LATIMES Rosa Brooks writes a much stronger column which does suggest that this is a big deal - and ties the GOP Congress to it for its complicitness overall towards what she terms the 'abusiveness' of congress at the hands of bushco. However the theme is the abusiveness of Bush and the issue of signing statements comes later in the column.http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/sunday/la-oe-brooks5may05,1,6912663.column?coll=la-util-opinion-sundayRosa Brooks:
Washington's abuser in chief
May 5, 2006
MOVE OVER, battered women! There's a new syndrome in town. It's called "battered Congress syndrome," and it was first identified by Norman J. Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute. It's strikingly like those of "battered women's syndrome," only the abusive partner is the Bush administration.
snip
But weakness and appeasement only escalate the abuse. Consider the White House's practice of attaching "signing statements" to legislation when the president doesn't feel like obeying a law. For instance, in 2005, Congress passed legislation requiring that "scientific information … prepared by government researchers … shall be transmitted
uncensored and without delay." The president said, "Sure, Honey!" and promised to sign the bill. But later, when no one was looking, he added a statement insisting that he could order researchers to withhold any information that might "impair … the deliberative processes of the executive."
The Constitution requires the president to "take care that the laws be faithfully executed." If a president can't live with a bill, he's supposed to veto it, so everyone knows where he stands. But when a president quietly eviscerates legislation through signing statements — something Bush has done to an eye-popping 750 statutes — he evades accountability. It's the political equivalent of the abusive spouse who takes care never to leave bruises that show.
...
Each day since the story broke, I have carefully read the internet news via searches on News.Google (I don't have Nexis search - so its the best I can do). Maybe these papers have carried real stories from the original one, but I didn't find them. Oddly, I did find a version of the original story in the Indianapolis Star (?!) - suggesting that Gannett carried it. So how are folks who don't read news on the internet, and thus didn't stumble across the original piece detailing the scope of this practice in the Boston Globe going to know about it? How are we going to have a sense that our Constitutional system of balances of powers is seriously in jeopardy?
I suspect the lack of journalistic outrage is along the lines of the initial treatment in the US media about the Downing Street Memos. A sort of arrogance of "we (media) already knew this and don't need to publish another story... nothing new here..." Since the news of the signing statement related to the Anti Torture law signed by bush broke and a second item about a similar signing statement regarding the Patriot Act. However this is big news, given the broad use (750 + means bush has a rate of issuing an extra-constitutional signing statement once every three days) and the broad scope (on a slew of issues - not just national security related - the bushco general shield from having to say anything else about a topic.)
What kind of coverage have you seen in your local papers? Do you get the sense that folks are at all aware of the story about the President trashing the Constitution?
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