Isn't it the case that all of these expanded powers that the executive branch is claiming will also be in the hands of all future Presidents? Does the administration want this sort of power in the hands of a Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama?

They're acting like they are never going to give up control of the White House. Do they know something we don't? Or maybe it's not a Republican/Democrat thing; maybe the corporate and business powers-that-be, who benefit the most from this kind of deregulation, are confident that no one's going to get elected President without being beholden to them...

There was a passage in this year's SOTU address that really struck me, but I've seen zero commentary anywhere about it. This is a prime opportunity to vent on the topic. Dubya was justifiably bemoaning the use and abuse of earmarks by Congress when he said:

"You didn't vote them into law. I didn't sign them into law. Yet, they're treated as if they have the force of law. The time has come to end this practice."

Seems to me that his words are even MORE appropriate as an unintended self-criticism of his own heavy use of so-called signing statements. Why no real legal challenge to this extra-constitutional and unconstitutional practice has occurred escapes me. Yes, I know other presidents have issued signing statements -- but the Bush administration obviously favors this practice far more than any other, and has honed it well, turning laws on their collective ears.

It should stop. Period.

This is no esoteric business practice issue.

When they say that they will not issue "any new agency 'guidance documents' [until they] are justified by a specific 'market failure,'" they mean that even if something is dangerous to the public, they can't create any regulation for it until someone is seriously hurt or killed, thereby demonstrating "specific market failure."

Think about that. Even if they knew (and/or suspected) that there might be something wrong with infant car seats, they couldn't do anything about it until a child was seriously hurt or killed because until that happens, any "market failure" is just speculation. "That car seat might pop out of the car, that belt might strangle a child in a collision, but you know, it just isn't specific yet, it's all just theory."

Plus, to extrapolate, I believe this means that the parents of said killed child would have to sue, and win, before the "specific market failure" was proven to have been the cause of her death.

Before I get too Chicken Little, though, I should point out that this is related to governement regulation, which is to say that if the car seat companies figured out on their own that something was wrong, they could fix it themselves before anything bad happened and before they were sued.

OK, stop laughing, I was being serious! It could happen! Yeah, OK, I can't keep a straight face either.

Please, folks, don't get off this one until we get a sane administration, and then make them fix it.

I think this statement proves a "specific governmental failure."

Rich Emery asks "Why no real legal challenge to this extra-constitutional and unconstitutional practice." The problem is not the statement itself but the action behind it.

First and foremost to remember, the presidential signing statement does not have the true force of law. Under our Constitution, Congress writes the law, the executive carries out the law, and the Judiciary say what the law is.

When the judiciary faces a legal challenge to a law and is forced to decipher what a law means, there are many items that it can look to in interpretation. The first and most important item the Court will look at is the plain language of the law. After that the Court may look at dictionaries, House or Senate debates, committee reports and so forth. One of the last things that a Court will consider is a post-billsigning statement, whether it be by the president or the legislative member who sponsored the bill. Post-signing statements are merely opinions of the law after it has already been enacted. Announcing a "signing statement" that contradicts the law he has just signed merely indicates the President's intention to break that law or fail to execute it properly and indicates his reasoning for it. If a legal challenge is brought against the government for failure to execute its duties under the law, the President's signing statement of his interpretation will carry little weight and the government will lose.

The real issue is not the signing statement, but the failure of the executive branch to carry out the law as enacted by Congress. The President does us a favor by announcing when he disagrees with a law because it alerts us and the legislature that he intends to break it and why. A bigger problem would be where he disagrees with a law but does not tell the public and simply, quietly, contravenes the law without announcement. In that situation the public might not even be aware that the President has decided that he knows better than the legislature.

Eventually, someone will bring a suit to challenge some of these presidential legal interpretations and be successful. However some laws are extremely difficult to find a potential plaintiff with legal standing. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court bars citizen/taxpayer suits brought merely because we think the government is breaking the law.

Here's the part of this we don't understand: Why is Bush's order even necessary? Last time we checked, the president's political appointees were already running the federal agencies he now feels a need to put in check.

What the administration is doing is illegal. They are not enforcing regulations that have been passed by the legislature. I don't know what the legal ramifications are for the individuals involved, but I know for certain that lawyers for regulatory agencies have told political appointees that their actions are illegal.

They are just providing more cover, to make it more difficult for Congress to get to the bottom of this.