The bill contained several oversight provisions intended to make sure the FBI did not abuse the special terrorism-related powers to search homes and secretly seize papers. The provisions require Justice Department officials to keep closer track of how often the FBI uses the new powers and in what type of situations. Under the law, the administration would have to provide the information to Congress by certain dates.<\/p>\n
Bush signed the bill with fanfare at a White House ceremony March 9, calling it ”a piece of legislation that’s vital to win the war on terror and to protect the American people.” But after the reporters and guests had left, the White House quietly issued a ”signing statement,” an official document in which a president lays out his interpretation of a new law.<\/p>\n
In the statement, Bush said that he did not consider himself bound to tell Congress how the Patriot Act powers were being used and that, despite the law’s requirements, he could withhold the information if he decided that disclosure would ”impair foreign relations, national security, the deliberative process of the executive, or the performance of the executive’s constitutional duties.”<\/p>\n
Bush wrote: ”The executive branch shall construe the provisions . . . that call for furnishing information to entities outside the executive branch . . . in a manner consistent with the president’s constitutional authority to supervise the unitary executive branch and to withhold information . . . “<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Signing statements are not new with the present administration. There is always a tension between the Legislative Branch and the Executive Branch between how much Congress can dictate how the Administration behaves, and other presidents have used signing statements to note where they disagree or consider certain provisions of dubious constitutional worth, or to clarify how they will (or won’t) apply the law.<\/p>\n
But the Bush Administration seems bound and determined to use “national security” and the in-retrospect-vaguely-worded “war authority” resolution of a few years back to basically do whatever they want, so long as they can tie it to the War on Terror. Which, even if one granted them the high morals and civic dutifulness of angels, would be a dubious and dangerous practice.<\/p>\n
Indeed, if you look at the signing statement, “national security” isn’t even the sole basis for withholding info. If it might cause diplomatic troubles (“you did what?!<\/em>“) or impairs the deliberative process of the executive (“hmmm, that might be embarrassing if the public or Congress learned about that”), then those are designated as legitimate excuses to not do what the law calls for.<\/p>\nSwell.<\/p>\n
I have been willing to cut the Administration a lot of slack over the years, largely because I reject knee-jerk reactions and jumping to conclusions. But Bush and his White House continue to be so ham-handed at setting up dangerous precedents that will <\/em>come back to bite this country that, frankly, I’ve long since joined those looking forward to the end of this term and the opportunityt to vote someone into office who can work and play well (and constitutionally) with others.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The new PATRIOT Act renewal included a smattering of new oversight and reporting provisions to make sure that the government doesn’t overstep its bounds in ensuring our national security. Except,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[54,17,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8902","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-elections-2008","category-homeland-security","category-politics-law"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":9945,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2006\/10\/08\/bush_asserts_right_to_ove.html","url_meta":{"origin":8902,"position":0},"title":"Bush asserts right to override oversight","author":"***Dave","date":"Sun 8-Oct-06 1:12pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Even if Congress says it gets to have unexpurgated reports from the Administration, Bush asserts that he can purge them all he sees fit President Bush, again defying Congress, says...","rel":"","context":"In "Home Improvement"","block_context":{"text":"Home Improvement","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/home-improvement"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10242,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2007\/03\/09\/because_of_course_such_wi.html","url_meta":{"origin":8902,"position":1},"title":"Because, of course, such will never, ever be abused","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 9-Mar-07 11:48am","format":false,"excerpt":"There were many loud howls and cries regarding the PATRIOT Act and various provisions therein that allowed law enforcement to do all sorts of \"give us this info and keep...","rel":"","context":"In "Homeland Security"","block_context":{"text":"Homeland Security","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/politics-law\/homeland-security"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":885,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2001\/11\/05\/rush_to_judgmen.html","url_meta":{"origin":8902,"position":2},"title":"Rush to judgment (or at least to law passage)","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 5-Nov-01 10:41pm","format":false,"excerpt":"The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is, like most advocacy groups, more than a bit over-zealous in defending its ideological position. Its analysis of the USA PATRIOT Act, though, is both...","rel":"","context":"In "Homeland Security"","block_context":{"text":"Homeland Security","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/politics-law\/homeland-security"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":128742,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2015\/11\/11\/reveal-a-back-door-go-to-prison.html","url_meta":{"origin":8902,"position":3},"title":"Reveal a back door, go to prison","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 11-Nov-15 3:13pm","format":false,"excerpt":"UK's proposed new \"security\" bill not only allows secret demands for back doors to be built into any software system (back doors that the government assures everyone will only ever be used for the best and most benign purposes, and will never, ever, ever be found or exploited by the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":13146,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2008\/07\/09\/yeah_deeply_disappointed.html","url_meta":{"origin":8902,"position":4},"title":"Yeah — deeply disappointed","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 9-Jul-08 10:03pm","format":false,"excerpt":"First off, the Senate voted to approve the FISA bill, including all the telco immunity provisions. And, second, Barrack Obama was one of the folks voting in favor of it....","rel":"","context":"In "Elections 2008"","block_context":{"text":"Elections 2008","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/politics-law\/elections-2008"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9671,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2006\/05\/16\/we_only_want_it.html","url_meta":{"origin":8902,"position":5},"title":"We only want it to fight the terrorists, right?","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 16-May-06 6:09am","format":false,"excerpt":"So last week, ABC News reported that a \"senior law enforcement official\" had told them that the phones of their investigative correspondents were being \"tracked\" by the government, in an...","rel":"","context":"In "Fourth Estate"","block_context":{"text":"Fourth Estate","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/media\/fourth-estate"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8902","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8902"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8902\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8902"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8902"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8902"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}