Saturday, February 27, 2016

Obama's Newfound Love For Presidential Signing Statements

by JASmius



Remember "signing statements," the addendums that President Bush43 sometimes attached to bills he signed into law indicating the parts of them with which he disagreed?  Remember how Barack Obama cited that as "proof" that Dubya was an authoritarian tinpot "power-abuser" with "no respect for the Constitution" during his first run for the White House eight years ago and how when HE was president, he was going to do away with signing statements altogether?



You know what I'm asking these questions, right?:

Leading Democrats are taking aim at the Obama administration for its opposition to newly passed legislation that aims to bolster the U.S.-Israel economic relationship and combat boycotts of Israel, according to a statement issued this week.

The Obama administration announced that it opposes portions of a bipartisan trade bill that would strengthen economic ties between the U.S. and Israel and force trade partners to sever ties with backers of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, an anti-Israel movement that seeks to economically isolate the Jewish State.

Barack Obama issued a rare statement opposing the bill’s pro-Israel language this week, claiming that it sought to legitimize Israeli settlements. Obama stated that he would not enforce the pro-Israel provisions as a result of his personal disagreement with the policies.

Yet he signed the bill into law.  Why he did so if he fundamentally disagreed with its tenets is baffling.  Or maybe it's not, since if it was truly bipartisan, and sufficiently so to override an Obama veto, he probably didn't want that public humiliation, so in his usual lawless, passive/aggressive fashion, he signed it and will passively, and unconstitutionally, "veto" it after the fact by abrogating his constitutional duty under Article II, Section 1 that the law be "faithfully executed".  Because The One doesn't care about standing for his principles; he only cares that his principles - and he - win.  Something in the way of which the rule of law and constitutional processes so often and so inconveniently get.

That doesn't make it right when Bush43 did it.  It does make it cynically entertaining as yet another flagrant example of my "right tribe/wrong tribe" metaphor.  So much so that you can almost forget that this is yet another egregious manifestation of Red Barry's intractable anti-Semitism.

One wonders how viable Democrat anger at their demigod's actions really is.  Would they be willing to go along with impeaching him?  That second question more than answers the first one, doesn't it?

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