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05.02 11 Baltimore City Students Win Awards in Md. History Day Competition
Ref.: Civic Events
Ref.: Arts & Education Events
Ref.: Public Service Notices
Ref. : Letters to the editor
05.17 Only biofuels will cut plane emissions
05.17 Australasia has hottest 60 years in a millennium, scientists find
05.15 Horrific Injuries Linked to BP Dispersant Corexit
05.15 'Last Call at the Oasis': Why Time Is Running Out to Save Our Drinking Water
05.14 German Government to Oppose Fracking
05.11 Petition calls on Brazilian president to veto 'catastrophic' forest code
05.11 Bans on School Junk Food Pay Off in California
05.11 When half a million Americans died and nobody noticed
05.10 Game Over for the Climate
05.10 Pollution: the great leveller
05.10 New study: Amish prove raw milk promotes health in children
05.10 Big Agriculture's Big Secrets: 9 Things You Need to Know About the Food You Eat
05.09 Gloria Feldt: The War on Women [video]
05.02 Common Pesticide “Disturbs” the Brains of Children
05.02 Humans Still Evolving as Our Brains Shrink
05.01 Big Changes in Ocean Salinity Intensifying Water Cycle
Ref. High health-care costs: It’s all in the pricing - graphic
Ref. Dollars for Doctors - How Industry Money Reaches Physicians
Ref. 2010 Comparative Price Report Medical and Hospital Fees by Country - Graphics
Ref. Health at a Glance 2011 - OECD Indicators
Ref. : Why is Healthcare Absurdly Expensive in USA (Part 2) [Graphics] (Part 1 is here)
Video Health Care Systems in Less Corrupt Countries
05.01 News Corporation has sought to undermine elected governments
Daily The Daily Howler
05.17 Federal court enjoins NDAA
05.16 Is the filibuster unconstitutional?
05.15 MONEY UNLIMITED
05.11 How the Corporate Right Hijacked America's Courts to Enrich the Top 1 Percent
05.03 Supreme Court Favorability Reaches New Low
05.01 Eliot Spitzer’s challenge to DOJ as it investigates Wall Street: ‘Bring some cases’ - video
05.01 Laissez-faire with strip-searches: America's two-faced liberalism
05.16 5 Ways Conservatives are Destroying the Institution of Marriage
05.16 Congress: The TSA Is Wasting Hundreds Of Millions In Taxpayer Dollars
05.16 The Economic Case for Same-Sex Marriage
05.16 If Information Is Power, What Is Lack Of Information? [video]
05.15 IMAGE: It doesn't have to be true, just credible...
05.15 WEDDING BELLS
05.15 Memo to Mitt: Time to Fess Up on Bullying
05.14 “The truth will set you free. But first, it will piss you off.”
05.14 Hedges: How Our Demented Capitalist System Made America Insane
05.11 Why Atheists Have Become a Kick-Ass Movement You Want on Your Side
05.11 Fixable Error, New Insight, and Social Security
05.10 Ballot Access
05.10 Christian Conservatives vs. Sex: The Long War Over Reproductive Freedom
05.03 Out of the Margins, Into the Fray
05.03 Occupy May Day: Voices from the LA protests [video]
05.02 Jon Stewart Assails GOP for Their Hypocrisy on Obama Campaign Bringing Up Bin Laden [video]
05.02 Hamptons Home Prices Rise as Buyers Prefer Luxury Deals
05.02 The Administration Is Scared of Its Own Regulatory Shadow
05.17 Inside Job, Narrated by Matt Damon (Full Length HD Documentary)
05.17 Nurses vs. High-Speed Traders
05.17 Paul Krugman’s Economic Blinders
05.16 “What Scares Me Isn’t $2 Billion Loss JP Morgan Made, What Scares Me is the Record $19 Billion in Profits” [video]
05.16 Republican Party suckles at the breast of Big Business
05.16 Weisbrot and Krugman are Wrong: Greece cannot pull off an Argentina
05.15 Greek deadlock heightens fears of full European economic crisis
05.14 Why We Regulate
05.11 Indentured Servitude for Seniors: Social Security Garnished for Student Debts
05.11 Breaking Up Four Big Banks
05.11 Wall Street’s immunity
05.11 How Wall Street Killed Financial Reform
05.10 Real Estate 4 Ransom -- locking up the Great American Dream
05.10 Quelle Surprise! Fed Defends Incompetent Bank Management Against Investors
05.10 Europe’s Problems Multiply
05.09 Ryan Shrugs: Overlooked GOP Budget Provision Would Fuel Offshoring With New Tax Incentives
05.09 Top 1% Fills Gov. Scott Walker’s Recall War Chest With $25 Million
05.09 ALEC Affiliated Corporations
05.09 Teachers’ Board Becomes Fifteenth Group To Drop ALEC
05.09 ALEC’s Top Five Anti-Environment ‘Model’ Laws
05.09 Special Rights for ALEC: Three States Exempt Stealth Corporate Lobbying Group From Lobbying Rules
05.09 A web of privilege supports this so-called meritocracy
05.03 How Wall Street Drives Up Gas Prices -- Ripping Us Off and Killing Jobs
05.03 Paul Krugman on How to Fix the Economy - and Why It's Easier Than You Think
05.02 There is an alternative to austerity
05.01 Under Catholic pressure Paul Ryan backs away from Rand, Objectivism
05.01 Tax Me, for F@%&’s Sake!
05.01 Tea Party Congressmen Accept Cash From Bailed-Out Bankers
05.01 Paul Krugman and Ron Paul discuss economics – as it happened
05.01 No alternative to austerity
05.17 South Sudan slides towards destitution amid border conflict with Sudan
05.15 IDF closes Palestinian school to make way for West Bank training zone
05.14 Noam Chomsky on:
• WikiLeaks, Obama’s Targeted Assassinations and Latin America’s Break From the U.S. [video]
•
Occupy Wall Street "Has Created Something That Didn’t Really Exist" in U.S. — Solidarity [video]
•
Palestinian Hunger Strike a Protest Against "Violations of Elementary Human Rights" [video]
05.14 INFOGRAPHIC: Gas Spending Around The World
05.14 Graphic: Products of Slavery
05.14 Israel warned of volatile situation as Palestinian hunger strikers near death
05.14 How Right-Wing Extremists and Islamists Are the Same
05.14 Guatemala's land grab and massacre
05.11 U.S. Military Taught Officers: Use ‘Hiroshima’ Tactics for ‘Total War’ on Islam
05.11 Thousands of British police join anti-austerity protest
05.10 China Investment Corp. Stops Buying Europe Government Debt on Crisis Concern
05.09 Inside Syria's crackdown: 'I found my boys burning in the street'
05.03 “We Did Not Choose This War” and Other Hypocrisies
05.03 Jobless Rate Reaches New High in Euro Zone
05.02 Collapsing Afghanistan & Pakistan Refuse to Cooperate with Obama Photo Op
05.02 Free the torture report
05.01 What Did You Do In The War, Daddy?
05.01 Quebec students ignite the popular imagination
05.01 Occupy Wall Street Plans Global Protests in Resurgence
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BACKGROUNDING THE NEWS:
Bush's Signing Statement Dictatorship
Bush's signing statements are building blocks for dictatorship. The longer he builds, the darker America becomes.
Bush's postsigning statement declared that he would interpret many sections of the new law "in a manner consistent with the president's constitutional authority to supervise the unitary executive branch." In plain English, this means that many of the limits that Congress imposed on Bush's power--and that he accepted when he took the money Congress appropriated--are null and void. Why? Because the president says so.
After he signed the bill, Bush announced that he is effectively entitled to edit the report as he pleases. But his "right to edit" means that he is entitled to delete information and thereby prevent Congress from learning of how the feds continue to shred privacy.
George W. Bush has added more than 800 "signing statements" to new laws since he took office. Earlier presidents occasionally appended such comments to new statutes, but Bush is the first to use signing statements routinely to nullify key provisions of new laws.
The American Bar Association recently declared that Bush's signing statements are "contrary to the rule of law and our constitutional separation of powers." The Congressional Research Service reported last month that Bush is using such statements as part of his "comprehensive strategy to ... expand executive power."
Apparently, the government is no longer obliged to obey any law that Bush does not personally approve. At a June congressional hearing, Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) asked Justice Department lawyer Michelle Boardman for a list of all the laws that Bush has declared will no longer be enforced. Boardman replied, "I cannot give you that list."
How can we know which laws Bush approves of? It's a secret. Bush's personal thoughts thus become the ultimate law of the land. No one can know whether the government is violating the "law" because Bush has not publicly declared what the law is.
Americans may have to wait many years to learn what the rule of law meant in 2006. The truth may be suppressed until Bush's aides begin publishing their memoirs or until the Supreme Court has a change of mood and decides that the executive branch is not entitled to boundless secrecy.
So what is the meaning of "limited government" in the Bush era? Merely that the courts and Congress must be prohibited from limiting the president's power. Bush's signing statements are building blocks for dictatorship. The longer he builds, the darker America becomes.
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This story was published on October 11, 2006.
