The Hill on Signing Statements
The Hill uses my reporting on the Pelosi bloggers conference call as a start point for discussing signing statements and the battle over the Iraq Supplemental.
It's not often a story jumps not simply from the blogs but from an "inside-the-blogs discussion" to become mainstream news. In this case, Jonathan E. Kaplan and Elana Schor used one of the few parts of my summary that was a straight quote from Speaker Pelosi as a start point for a discussion of how Congressional Democrats might fight a signing statement from President Bush.
Pelosi's statement, "We can take the President to court" came from the tail end of an answer to a challenge one of the bloggers made about what actions Speaker Pelosi might take if the President added a signing statement indicating his intention not to follow the framework of the supplemental. (Fwiw, I don't think Pelosi spokesman Nadeam Elshami's quote in this piece really confirms Pelosi's "going to court" statement. To be frank, the article, which I have some qualms about, is just not clear on that point.)
The Hill does note that when the President vetoed H.R. 1591, however, he did add just this sort of signing statement:
An interesting development on a topic sure to get much more discussion in the coming weeks.
Tags: Speaker Pelosi the Hill Signing Statements Iraq Supplemental
It's not often a story jumps not simply from the blogs but from an "inside-the-blogs discussion" to become mainstream news. In this case, Jonathan E. Kaplan and Elana Schor used one of the few parts of my summary that was a straight quote from Speaker Pelosi as a start point for a discussion of how Congressional Democrats might fight a signing statement from President Bush.
Pelosi's statement, "We can take the President to court" came from the tail end of an answer to a challenge one of the bloggers made about what actions Speaker Pelosi might take if the President added a signing statement indicating his intention not to follow the framework of the supplemental. (Fwiw, I don't think Pelosi spokesman Nadeam Elshami's quote in this piece really confirms Pelosi's "going to court" statement. To be frank, the article, which I have some qualms about, is just not clear on that point.)
The Hill does note that when the President vetoed H.R. 1591, however, he did add just this sort of signing statement:
Indicating that he may consider attaching a signing statement to a future supplemental spending measure, Bush last week wrote in his veto message, “This legislation is unconstitutional because it purports to direct the conduct of operations of the war in a way that infringes upon the powers vested in the presidency.”
An interesting development on a topic sure to get much more discussion in the coming weeks.
Tags: Speaker Pelosi the Hill Signing Statements Iraq Supplemental
Comments
Although I have to say that I read the Bruce Fein quote toward the end (with the bracketed language) three times and I still don't understand it. I wonder if whoever inserted the bracketed language didn't quite get it right.
But it's late and I might as well wait for the standing expert to get hold of this and pick it apart. Maybe then it will be clearer. :)