Here's To Bill "Slick Willy" Clinton!, customized mug from Zazzle.com

Too many things on the spike and too much inspiration.

This is the best I could do for today

Here's To Bill "Slick Willy" Clinton!,
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webcarve

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Closing time

A moment of beauty found while I was busy with self-promotion. You may be amazed - as I was - that this image was created entirely with 3d rendering software. Follow the links to the creator's main site to see other astonishingly beautiful works.

Closing time - La fermeture
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gtran

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I'm a pundit now?

Newsvine - Web 2.0 V.S. the Hacks of Fox News

I've joined Newsvine, it seems. I need to stop opening new accounts! But Blogger was down this morning and I had to get my fix.

I'm pretty happy with the results:

It used to be that if you were a political party with a large chunk of the MSM behind you, enforcing your message, you pretty much had things as you wished - a lock on the reality of the moment and the later "truth" of history. Nothing that disagreed with the consensus reality would ever make it into the broad consciousness of the American people before everyone who had a stake in the consensus were long dead.

Well, so much for that. History is being written in real time and is accessable for the first time to individual voters long before politicians, plutocrats and pundits would prefer.

Indeed, here am I, an ordinary and remarkably underconnected person, pontificating away in a forum that, at a rough guess must attract as many readers as the newspaper of a medium to large city. Not only that, but my words will not fade or wrap fish - you will be able to find them, archived on the web so long as there is a web.

Please drop by and tell me what you think. :)

Group decries Bush's law interpretations - Yahoo! News

Group decries Bush's law interpretations - Yahoo! News:

"WASHINGTON -
President Bush's penchant for writing exceptions to laws he has just signed violates the Constitution, an American Bar Association task force says in a report highly critical of the practice.

The ABA group, which includes a one-time
FBI director and former federal appeals court judge, said the president has overstepped his authority in attaching challenges to hundreds of new laws.

The attachments, known as bill-signing statements, say Bush reserves a right to revise, interpret or disregard measures on national security and constitutional grounds.

'This report raises serious concerns crucial to the survival of our democracy,' said the ABA's president, Michael Greco. 'If left unchecked, the president's practice does grave harm to the separation of powers doctrine, and the system of checks and balances that have sustained our democracy for more than two centuries.'"

Tony Snow and the Apologists are suggesting that the President's concerns are purely constitutional. While I agree that Congress has shown less and less regard for the Constitution over the last decade or so, with it's asset forfeiture laws and various attempts to censor, filter and dumb down the Internet and media in general, I have seen no concern on his part, or his predecessors about the constitutionality of laws that affect my rights.

Limits on the President's "Unitary Executive" presumption seem to be an exception to his rule. But he's unwilling to have that presumption challenged, so he doesn't do what a real president would do, use his veto. Instead, he uses signing statements that state that he will ignore yet another law.

This is quite different from issuing a statement that states the executive's understanding of how a law might be constitutionally implemented as guidance to the Executive Branch as a whole.

The ABA report said President Reagan was the first to use the statements as a strategic weapon, and that it was encouraged by then-administration lawyer
Samuel Alito — now the newest Supreme Court justice.

The task force included former prosecutor Neal Sonnett of Miami; former FBI Director William Sessions; Patricia Wald, former chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit; former Republican Rep. Mickey Edwards; and former Reagan administration lawyer Bruce Fein; and law school professors and other lawyers.

I think I'm on pretty solid and central ground here when I say that it's time to revisit Sen. Fiengold's censure resolution.


tag: Supreme Court, dangerous president, miserable failure, unitary executive, constitutional, constitution, commander in chief, George Bush, signing statements, Samuel Alito, ABA, American Bar Association