Don't be fooled. The Foley Follies are no more than a footnote to the real story in this election.
The real story is the inexorable march of executive tyranny, and whether the American people will muster the wisdom to elect a Congress that will check it.
A big chunk of evidence about why they should has just dropped into our laps, from a source even Dick Cheney will find it hard to impugn. . . .
The
Congressional Research Service--the strictly non-partisan research arm of the Library of Congress--has now sounded a serious alarm about Bush's practice of issuing signing statements. As reported by the indispensable Charlie Savage in the
Boston Globe,
President Bush's frequent use of signing statements to assert that he has the power to disobey newly enacted laws is ``an integral part" of his ``comprehensive strategy to strengthen and expand executive power" at the expense of the legislative branch, according to a report by the non partisan Congressional Research Service.
In a 27-page report written for lawmakers, the research service said the Bush administration is using signing statements as a means to slowly condition Congress into accepting the White House's broad conception of presidential power, which includes a presidential right to ignore laws he believes are unconstitutional.
The ``broad and persistent nature of the claims of executive authority forwarded by President Bush appear designed to inure Congress, as well as others, to the belief that the president in fact possesses expansive and exclusive powers upon which the other branches may not intrude," the report said.
As Savage notes, the CRS report says that Bush's signing statements are
"'`generally unsupported by established legal principles.'" But as Savage also notes, Bush's use of signing statements to extend the ascendance of the executive has continued unabated.
Do not be fooled. This election is not about the sexual misdeeds of a Congressman, or even about a hideous and unnecessary war. It is not about national security. In the long sweep of American and world history, this election is about the same issue that Americans believed they confronted in 1776: whether or not we shall live in a state defined by unchecked tyrannical power.
Do not for one moment permit yourself to forget that truth, or permit others to remain in ignorance of it.