Mroom raises a good question. Signing statements have no legal effect and are less than obiter dicta in judicial decisions. If Congress passed a law banning wiretapping without a warrant, and GWB wrote a signing statement stating "I piss on your law" and continued to wiretap conversations without a warrant, then, if there ever was a then, if he were called before a legal court, his signing statement would have no effect as a legal defense.

However, thanks to an uninformed public, his signing statement has a great impact on the defense of his actions. Thanks to propaganda and a president that often gives oral "signing statements" in his speeches, we have a public that can't discern the difference between legally justifiable actions and personal opinion. That so many people believe Saddam Hussein was involved in 9/11 is almost solely the result of "oral signing statements" by Bush when he opens any discussion with 9/11 and answers every question about why he went to war with how 9/11 changed everything.

This works, the polls show it works. His acknowledgments that he knows Saddam was not involved are like the fast talking announcer listing the hidden costs of buying a car at the end of a sales commercial (something at least the elderly understood at one of his last speeches). His signing statements are designed to do the same thing; to confuse abrogation of the law with a legal right to violate the law. Write a signing statement saying the law does not apply to you and Congress is forced to call the president to account or remain silent. If it does and it is later discoverd that the president has never abided by the law, he can wave the signing statement out for all to see as an example that Congress knew his intentions and did nothing because they approved of his intentions.

The fight here is not legal, it is public relations. Without an informed public, you can fool alot of people, if not all the time, then at least until his term is up. Then the Democratic president can face the music.

For all those Democratic senators that might have wished they had opposed this war back in 2002, they might consider that they will equally regret not supporting impeachment right now.

This is to Paul Minot and others who wonder why plagiarism is the "worst a writer can do" as opposed to so many other harmful statements they could make. Let us assume for the moment that I am a writer (a career I so wish for, but for some odd reason no one has asked me to join them let alone let me buy them a drink. :) ) I write angry diatribes in my cell or lonely room and maybe just once, some rag publishes it. My thoughts and ideas are now out in the ether or the paint. Now the rest of the world is able and free to challenge my writings my thoughts and beliefs; and the debate is on.

However, let us assume that, in my lonely room, after drinking too many sangrias and watching Oklahoma once too often, I get on the net and lift other people's writings and call them as my own. If anyone wishes to challenge me on my statements I may neatly deflect to the target of my plagiarism or even slyly appeal to other sources as proof that I am not some crank but the forefront of an idealogy. Most of all, when I write a great piece that is not a word of my own I am really not a writer. I am a cipher. In terms of writing and the point of it all, I have no opinion, no theme, no artistic bent, I have nothing to offer the reader other than what someone else wrote. I am not a writer.

The worst thing a writer could ever do is plagiarize, because when he puts his pen down and picks up another's article for his own gain, he is not a writer, he is a xerox machine. Nothing more.

I checkout his site. Yeah, I'd sooner give my name to Homeland Security's terrorist watch list than to that yahoo.