Bush statements a sign of our ironic times

If you recall the lessons of “Schoolhouse Rock� — specifically, the one about how a lowly bill becomes a law — you’ll remember that first, Congress passes a bill and then it goes to the president, who either signs or vetoes it.

The song is more detailed than that. It describes the bill traveling through the House — that’s the body of Congress made up of crazy people — and then through the Senate — the one composed mostly of rich white people — and then on to the president. And if the president doesn’t like the bill, he can veto it, but Congress can override the veto.

It seemed like a pretty straightforward civics lesson.

Yet, as is often the case, life is not like cartoons — something that causes me a great deal of confusion.

The song doesn’t even get into signing statements.

These things are great. What happens is Congress can pass a bill, the president can sign it into law and then issue a statement saying he plans to ignore the law. The best part is, the statement can be kept secret so that nobody knows which parts of the laws the president plans to obey or ignore. I mean, let’s say if the president is late for an important nap or something, could he issue a signing statement saying he doesn’t have to obey the speed limit?

These things are causing quite a stink for President Dubya because he frequently signs bills into law that he has no intention of following, issuing a signing statement that he claims permits him to ignore the law.

The most famous of these was the bill that outlawed torture. If you’ll recall, the president’s legal eagles — perhaps flying way up in the thin air where their brains are deprived of oxygen — ruled that torturing people was OK. It turns out not a lot of people think torturing people is OK. It turns out one of those people was Sen. John McCain, an Arizona Republican who had been tortured himself when he was a POW during Vietnam. So McCain spearheaded a bill to outlaw torture.

The president signed it as McCain looked on.

The president said things like, “We do not torture.� Well, he said that, exactly.

The ink hadn’t dried on the bill when the president turned around and issued a signing statement, which was kept secret, saying, in essence, he didn’t have to follow the law he had just signed and that torturing people was OK by him.

President Dubya does this kind of thing all the time. He’s issued, at last count, according to a report from the American Bar Association, about 800 signing statements. The previous 42 presidents, combined, issued fewer than 600, the ABA pointed out.

The ABA is pretty upset about this, calling it a “constitutional crisis.�

You could also call it a dictatorship.

But that’s neither here nor there.

The ABA has suggested that Congress do something. Did it propose doing away with signing statements? Of course not. It merely recommended that Congress require the president to tell it which parts of the laws he signs that he intends to ignore.

Sounds simple enough.

Except Congress did that.

In 2002, the ABA reported, Congress passed a bill requiring the attorney general to give it a report detailing signing statements and informing Congress of laws or parts of laws that the president intends to ignore.
President Dubya signed the bill into law.

You can guess what happened next.

President Dubya then issued a signing statement saying he did not have to obey the law.
It bears repeating.

Congress passed a bill requiring the president to tell it whenever he decides to ignore certain laws and the president signed it and then decided to ignore it.

You could conclude a lot things.

But the real lesson is, this is the final straw.

Irony is taking its last breaths.

Mike Argento, whose column appears Mondays and Fridays in Living and Sundays in Viewpoints, can be reached at 771-2046 or at mike@ydr.com. Read more Argento columns at ydr.com/mike or at www.yorkblog.com — Argento’s Front Stoop.