Tribe on Signing Statements: Always controversial and always smart, Harvard Law Professor Lawrence Tribe addresses the question of signing statements in today's Boston Globe. His conclusion? It is not the signing statements per se that are problematic. Money excerpt:
To be sure, I believe that President Bush has abused the practice of using signing statements as signals of presidential intentions regarding both ambiguous statutes and ones with embedded unconstitutional provisions. But the fact that the incumbent president has used such statements in ways that expose a certain cynicism in signing rather than vetoing measures that he has no intention of applying and enforcing as Congress intended -- asserting that he regards Congress as having trespassed on his constitutional prerogatives -- is objectionable not by virtue of the signing statements themselves but rather by virtue of the president's failure to face the political music by issuing a veto and subjecting that veto to the possibility of an override in Congress. It is also objectionable on occasion because of the inflated view of executive prerogative that the president has often announced.
Challenging the signing statements themselves, or the general practice of using them, does not represent even a plausible way of contesting this president's manifestly unreviewable decision to sign rather than veto any particular law, however cynical that decision might be and however unconvincing his explanations are. Nor does challenging such statements represent a plausible way of contesting the overblown character of this president's views of his constitutional prerogatives. That is something that can be tested judicially only in a genuine ``case or controversy" that arises out of a decision to carry out the threat of non-enforcement made by his signing statement, and by someone with the constitutional standing to press such a challenge against what amounts to an executive omission to act.
To me there is one logical approach, albeit a controversial one: The line-item veto. Giving the president that option would mean that presidents would have to make tough decisions, would allow them to excise pork and frivolity (and Bridges to Nowhere, one would hope) and would mean that fundamentally good bills with flawed parts could be imrpoved with Congress having an opportunity to override. I would gladly take a line-item veto in lieu of signing statements.
Massachusetts' State Sport?: Again from the Globe, comes news that Governor Mitt Romney has signed a controversial bill.
It was a moment of triumph for fourth-graders from the Joseph P. Mulready School in Hudson. Dressed in oversized Boston Celtics jerseys, they cheered as Governor Mitt Romney, with a stroke of his pen, pronounced basketball the official sport of Massachusetts.
They had proposed the bill for the designation, written to legislators, and testified at the State House. Now, their victory secured, it was time for cake, thick slices of which they devoured in the State House pressroom.
But out on the streets of Boston, despite a solid defense from Romney and other hoop advocates, news that basketball had become the state's official sport triggered disbelief.
Boston loves the Celtics, and during the 1980s Boston was Celtics town. But even then it was never only a Celtics town, and I would argue that at no point has basketball been the favored sport of Massachusetts residents. Massachusetts is a baseball state as Boston is a baseball city. I bet Jack Abramoff was behind this travesty.
African Books:Finally, more on African literature from the Mail & Guardian.
[Denis]Hirson’s new book, White Scars, is also about books -- four in particular that, he writes, “I once needed to read over and over, to the point of obsession.” Even if he read these books incompletely the first time, or didn’t understand them, he says, “these books did not simply interest me; they surrounded me” -- like, one might say, the “walls” of his father’s house.
Books about books. A very meta- concept, but also very dcat. (Every so often dcat likes to go all Rickey Henderson on you.)
3 comments:
Is it just me or this blog just getting worse? I mean, it's horrible. DCat needs to step up his game.
Agreed. He's terrible. Oh, wait . . .
GoodLib --
I have to say, I cannot talk rationally about the Sox these days. Too frustrating. Too many people blaming inaction at the break (As if Kip Wells, now injured, by the way, would have made a big difference and as if we knew Varitek and trot were going to go down. The pitcghing is a problem, but it seems like the pitching falls apart every night in a different way, so we have the starter falter one night, middle relief the next, and now even Pappy.
Also, I decided early in the week not to shave until the Sox won again and now I am all itchy and have a beard in the scorching West Texas sun.
dcat
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