“Its time to move away from thinking of broadcasters as trustees and time to treat them in the way that almost everyone else in the society does%u2014that is, as a business,” he said. “Television is just another appliance. It is a toaster with pictures.”

Hunter S. Thompson, the late and lamented wordsmith, translated this analysis into a gonzo language everyone could understand concluding, “The TV business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs.”

Frank Zappa weighed in, too:

“I am the slime from your video, oozin’ along on your living rooom floor”

etc.

Another assfucking by the neo nazis in power.

They do as Hitler did….make the illegal legal.

The person you’re looking for will NOT be McCain. Did you forget that he’s running in 2008?

“Legislating from the Bench”

“Activist Judges”

How many times have we heard these phrases from the hypocritical right wing?

Judges are required by the Constitution to INTERPRET the law. The president is required by the Constitution to ENFORCE the law.

Presidential Signing Statements don’t mean diddly squat. If the President objects to any part of a bill submitted by Congress, he can VETO it. I thought everybody learned that basic principle in Civics class. The Constitution does not give the President the authority to LEGISLATE FROM HIS DESK.

The signing statement thing is interesting.

You can’t, I suppose, keep a president from signing the damned things. The question is what status they should have.

The courts will eventually decide what- if any- legal status they have.

More importantly, though, are the political implications. If the President says: “I take this law to mean x” even though congress meant Y- then he/she will IMPLEMENT it as if it says X- and congress is put in the position of chasing it’s tail. They can pass another law specifying Y- but the signing statement war can go on and on until a court resolves it.

Of course selective enforcement has always been a option to a president- but this gets ridiculous.

So, yes, this is something that’s beyond precedent, and I think it’s really beyond what any President should be able to do. The President is given veto powers to register his disagreement with a law. That’s usually enough.

Your clarion call is misdirected.

It’s elected democrats who should be taking this fight to the people. That would be newsworthy. That would compel the scrutiny of the multi-faceted news media throughout the country, from small town papers to CNN’s airwaves. Why they don’t is superfluous to that bedrock piece of common sense. Simply put, they should.

It serves to illustrate, too, why I believe the seeds of that party’s destruction have taken too deep a root for it to ever recover as an opposition force worthy of the name.