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All Kidding Aside
Blogger Ed Morrissey , for instance, writes: "There were two problems with Colbert's act. The first is that it wasn't funny, and the second was that it didn't keep with the spirit of the evening. The Correspondents Dinner prides itself on making the evening a safe venue for all, and the humor is supposed to stay self-deprecating. Attacking one's opponents in this forum is considered bad manners. Colbert has no grasp of his audience or the event, and he paid the price for it. And that price was painful indeed."
My Night
I'll have more in tomorrow's column about my own personal experiences on Saturday night. Short version: I met Karl Rove, but I didn't feel good about it.
Bush: Laws Don't Apply
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Charlie Savage of the Boston Globe weighs in with the most authoritative -- and most alarming -- story yet on Bush's proclivity for signing statements.
"President Bush has quietly claimed the authority to disobey more than 750 laws enacted since he took office, asserting that he has the power to set aside any statute passed by Congress when it conflicts with his interpretation of the Constitution. . . .
"Legal scholars say the scope and aggression of Bush's assertions that he can bypass laws represent a concerted effort to expand his power at the expense of Congress, upsetting the balance between the branches of government. The Constitution is clear in assigning to Congress the power to write the laws and to the president a duty 'to take care that the laws be faithfully executed.' Bush, however, has repeatedly declared that he does not need to 'execute' a law he believes is unconstitutional."
Here's Bush's M.O: "Bush is the first president in modern history who has never vetoed a bill, giving Congress no chance to override his judgments. Instead, he has signed every bill that reached his desk, often inviting the legislation's sponsors to signing ceremonies at which he lavishes praise upon their work.
"Then, after the media and the lawmakers have left the White House, Bush quietly files 'signing statements' -- official documents in which a president lays out his legal interpretation of a bill for the federal bureaucracy to follow when implementing the new law. The statements are recorded in the federal register. . . .
"In his signing statements, Bush has repeatedly asserted that the Constitution gives him the right to ignore numerous sections of the bills -- sometimes including provisions that were the subject of negotiations with Congress in order to get lawmakers to pass the bill. He has appended such statements to more than one of every 10 bills he has signed."
Some of the examples Savage cites include anti-torture provisions, requirements to give information about government activity to congressional oversight committees, affirmative-action provisions, whistle-blower protections for nuclear regulatory officials, and safeguards against political interference in federally funded research.
Oh, just go read the story .
Here's a nifty graphic .
Here are some examples of signing statements, from the Globe; here are all of them, from the Federal Register.
