AddictedToMe

Explain, please? Don't tell me you're one of those liberals that wants Bush hanged for war crimes while Obama decides who is next on his "kill list" (list that's NOT approved by Congress) are you?

And those Executive Orders he's so fond of? He doesn't need Congressional approval for those, correct? For some reason you didn't address that...

The President doesn't pull 'executive orders' out his ass. Executive orders have their base in BILLS, passed by Congress and signed by him into law. As Chief Executive of the country, It's his Constitutional obligation and duty to interpret a law and to decide how that law is to be interpreted and enforced. Some laws don't require much interpretation to enforce them EXACTLY as they are written. But when a law has a 'gray' area in it or when the law, as written, is impractical or impossible to perform. Or When he believes that the Congress has passed a law with some good things in it, good enough for him to sign into law, but that part of what they've written in to it is unconstitutional. Or if the President just has a preference about how a law is to be interpreted and enforced. That's when an Executive order, a 'Signing Statement', comes in.

Say, the Congress passes a routine maintenance bill to have the Capital building painted. Normally, once the President signs the passed bill into law, it would go to the GSA, they'd hire the contractors, order the paint and then they'd get 'er done.

But, suppose the President had a preference. Just suppose the President wanted the Capital building painted red and white candy striped. He could attach a signing statement, an executive order, stating that the Capital building be red and white candy stripe. That's the paint job the GSA would have to give it. After all, the President of the United States has just as much right, obligation and duty to decide what kind of paint jobs go on government buildings as the President of Macy's has to decide what kinds of paint jobs go on Macy's buildings.

Of course, the members of Congress, neither Republicans nor Democrats are going to like this and they'll all be having hissy fits. But they have a remedy. They could take the Presidents signing statement, executive order, to the Federal Courts to have his order 'stayed' until the Supreme Court decided on the propriety of the paint job. Of course, the Supreme Court would decide, within days, that red and white candy stripes just aren't dignified enough for the Capital Building. In that event, the Presidents signing statement would be 'overturned' and the GSA would order their usual beige and white paint.

Look at the immigration laws sent to the President by Republicans in Congress. Basically, they stated that the Congress was appropriating so much money and that the President was to use that money to STOP ALL illegal immigration into the country and to catch ALL the undocumented aliens already in this country and deport each and every one of them back to their home country.

The President looked at those bills and said "That's impossible!! It would take armed immigration agents standing shoulder to shoulder all around the entire border to stop ALL illegal immigration. It would cost more than the entire Federal budget to do that. And they also want me to catch every undocumented alien already here and deport them, to!!! To track down, catch, prosecute and deport all 14 million would cost 100 times the entire Federal Budget.

So he wrote an executive order attaching it as a signing statement to the bill allocating part of that money to 'increasing NI forces, part to buy technology so that the NI agents could do a better job with the resources they had and were adding, and part to go after those we really didn't want here, undocumented aliens who were involved in crime, and get them deported.

Let's proceed.

Congress writes and passes a bill that is so wonderful that everybody loves it. Nobody can find anything in it that they don't like, but it's so long, and written in parts by different folks, that nobody has actually read the whole thing. When it hits the Presidents desk for signature into law, he breaks it up into manageable sections and all the Presidential aids with law backgrounds are reading sections. Eventually, someone finds something. way down inside the document, there is a section that first offense jaywalkers be taken behind the jail and their left hand held in boiling water until their fingers fall off. Second offenders lose their right fingers that way. third and fourth offenders lose their left, then their right hands.

The President looks at these punishments and says "OH NO!! These are unconstitutional cruel and unusual punishments. I don't have the line item veto to kill this portion of the law and the rest of it is just so wonderful that I can't just veto the whole bill and send it back to Congress so that they can redo that section. They might just over ride my veto and make it a law with the unconstitutional parts intact. They might even make changes that changes this wonderful bill into something horrid."

Then, he thinks of an Executive Order. "I'll attach a signing statement. I'll change the cruel and unusual punishments into constitutional punishments.

So the President attaches an Executive Order to the bill changing the first and second offenses to small fines and the third and fourth offenses to short jail sentences.

And we all lived happily ever after.

BE AWARE!!! Congress ALWAYS has the remedy of challenging a Presidents signing statements (executive orders). The Federal Courts can 'stay' a signing statement, but only the Supreme Court can overturn one. In the contentious atmosphere in Washington, today, if the Presidents opponents in Congress don't challenge his executive orders, it means they don't believe that they have grounds to overturn.