Sunday, April 30, 2006

A Different President

When I first wrote about President's signing statements back in March, I didn't realize how many more of these statements Bush has signed. His father signed 232, Clinton signed 140 in eight years, George W. Bush has signed 750 in a little over five years. This translates to about one a week for Bush pere, one every three weeks for Clinton and three a week for Bush fils.

The signing statement business is relatively new; Meese started it under Reagan. Most of the presidents since then have used the signing statements to record their disagreement with relatively minor aspects of a bill; they vetoed the bill if they had major disagreements. How many bills has the current President vetoed? Exactly zero.

Again, are we becoming a nation of laws or of men?

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