A bill to prohibit secret modifications and revocations of the law

By Mr. FEINGOLD (for himself and Mr. Whitehouse):
S. 3405. A bill to prohibit secret modifications and revocations of
the law, and for other purposes; to the Committee on Homeland Security
and Governmental Affairs.
Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, today, the junior Senator from Rhode
Island, Senator Whitehouse, and I will introduce the Executive Order
Integrity Act of 2008. The bill prevents secret changes to published
Executive Orders by requiring the President to place a notice in the
Federal Register when he has modified or revoked a published Order.
Through this simple measure, the bill takes an important step toward
stemming the growth of secret law in the executive branch.
The principle behind this bill is straightforward. It is a basic
tenet of democracy that the people have a right to know the law.
Indeed, the notion of ``secret law'' has been described in court
opinions and law treatises as ``repugnant'' and ``an abomination.''
That is why the laws passed by Congress have historically been matters
of public record.
But the law that applies in this country includes more than just
statutes. It includes regulations, the controlling legal
interpretations of courts and the executive branch, and certain
Presidential directives. As we learned at a hearing of the Judiciary
Committee's Constitution Subcommittee that I chaired in April, some of
this body of executive and judicial law is increasingly being kept
secret from the public, and too often from Congress as well. The Bush
administration has concealed Department of Justice legal opinions,
interpretations of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, and
even the agency rule that requires Americans to show identification at
airports.

http://www.fas.org/sgp/congress/2008/secretlaw.html

And there's no chance that Congress would fight for its own power by overriding.

shouldn't even be an issue in a democratic republic that supposedly lives by the "rule of law".

Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, tannybogus.

And look what happened to that. Not only a signing statement to the effect that Dubya had his fingers crossed behind his back when he signed the bill into law so he doesn't have to obey it, but the US military manual cited by the bill as defining acceptable behaviour was immediately re-issued with 5 new classified pages (you can bet your life that they were about torture).

This is just such a sad indictment on the current state of our government, here at the dawn of the 21st Century.

attention. I hope this has a chance of succeeding. I can't believe I'm actually having to second guess the law makers in this country about preventing secret laws stemming from the executive branch from preventing us to know the laws. Bless both Sen. Feingold, and Whitehouse.

Never know what you will find in the net. Reading those bills can be like translating Urdu sometimes,
but this was actually straightforward.

Any so called laws that the President executes should only be those that are specifically within the realm of their position. When to turn on and turn off the electricity of the White House.

and then claim it's an unconstitutional infringement on the urinary execretive.