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• Friday, March 16, 2007 06:25 PM

  I understand your question now, Kovie.

  While you're waiting for an answer, part of it might be here. Many of the signing statements may not be spelled out well enough to be used in the way you suggest.

  Many of the objections are written in such general and opaque terms, and with resort to vague assertions about an intent to “construe” the provisions in conformity with the Commander-in-Chief Clause, the “unitary executive,” etc., that it is impossible to know just what they mean in terms of how the Administration is implementing the statutes in question. According to Prof. Cooper, in President Bush's first term alone he offered 505 constitutional objections to various statutory provisions, and many of those objections applied to multiple provisions within a particular bill. This might mean that the Executive is refusing to implement hundreds of statutes enacted since 2001 (and many enacted prior to that date, too), or construing them in an implausible and unexpected way—or, then again, it might not. Congress and the public are offered no clear understanding of the legal theory of unconstitutionality, or of precisely which statutory provisions will not be enforced, under what circumstances, and why. The statements are, instead, mere placeholders, with respect to a vast number of statutory provisions, signaling that the Administration reserves the right not to enforce numerous unspecified provisions.

  http://www.tpmcafe.com/blog/specialguests/2006/jul/31/untangling_the_debate_on_signing_statements

  —EJ Read EJ's other letters
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