New President, Same Bullshit

Check it out here.

For those of you who do not know, a signing statement is a tool that, until recently (last few decades) hadn't really been used by the Executive Branch to serve any sort of political purpose. But under Presidents Clinton and Bush, most strikingly Bush, signing statements became well-defined instructions on how the Executive Branch was supposed to execute legislation. This sounds all good and well, except that both Clinton and Bush used signing statements to completely gut the intention of the bills that were signed. Instead of straight-forward instructions, often times the administration would outline ways to circumvent the bill they just signed; they would limit the scope of the bill and who it applied to or in what situations it applied; they would create exceptions to the rules that were just signed into law. Basically, if the bill just signed into law were a big scary, muscely dude meant to enforce some restriction on the political policy of the administration, a signing statement, under Bush and less-often Clinton, would be the giant sword that would swoop in and cut off big, scary muscely dude's arms and legs leaving him a useless, destitute and scarred shell of a human who can enforce nothing.

It would appear Obama might be up to the same shenanigans. We must wait for clarification and then not take them at their word. Because no politician should ever be taken at his or her word.