Well, well, well......another major newspaper stopping just sort of the word impeachment.
This time The Miami Herald agrees that the President has gone too far when he declared authority to open our mail at will.
From the Editorial at The Miami Herald:
The postal legislation that President Bush signed into law last month seems innocent enough. It gives the government the right to open mail without a warrant if there is suspicion that it may contain a bomb, anthrax or some other threatening substance. President Bush said the law gives the government no power that it doesn't already have. The U.S. Postal Inspection Service agrees. But the law isn't as benign as it seems.
Nothing ever is as it seems with these guys.
More below.
Update: skywriter pointed out that it is technically an "Editorial", not an "Op-Ed." Who knew?
The Miami Herald gets right to the point...the President is using the signing statements to ignore and/or circumvent the law - ie breaking the law!
In an investigative report last year, The Boston Globe reported that President Bush has issued signing statements more than 750 times during his presidency, more than all other presidents combined. A report by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service found that the Bush administration is using the practice to assert the primacy of the executive branch and to ignore, change or circumvent laws with which the president disagrees.
Again - he is breaking the law! How in the world would our forefathers ever allow the executive to just attach a post-it note to any law it felt like saying that the President and Executive branch were immune to such laws? Especially at the magnitude of this bumbling President. I would like to know just exactly why it is not possible for the President to follow those 750 laws.
And finally, they call on Congress to act:
The scope of the president's use of signing statements is breathtaking and scary. With a sweep of his pen, the president can intrude into citizens' private affairs, hide financial bungling by the government, negate months of hard work by Congress and commit or cover up a multitude of sins and wrongdoing. Congress has a solemn duty to, at minimum, conduct open hearings on the use of signing statements and demand a full accounting from the president
A full accounting of the President. I couldn't agree more.
Let the hearings begin.