Obama's first signing statement

Well, it's been a month since I last posted anything. I was thinking that today - on the monthiversary of my last post - I really should write SOMETHING, but what?

I was thinking I could offer some uninformed commentary on a recent encounter between the US Navy and the Chinese navy in the South China Sea (which took place in the same area in which a Chinese air force plane clipped a US spy plane in 2001, forcing the crew to make an emergency landing and resulting in their capture by the Chinese government. 9/11 made everyone forget about this.) This incident (and the 2001 incident) both have everything to do with an underground submarine base located on (under) the island of Hainan.

On a lighter note, I was thinking of maybe writing about how much I deeply, deeply hate the ads that Hulu has made for themselves. (Evidently Hulu makes it difficult to link directly to the diatribe I have posted on their site, so if you're interested then go HERE, click the Discussion tab and then look for the thread titled "these ads are not good")

I was forwarded an article today in which one of my favorite authors describes as a "Multi-generational Ponzi scheme" the faulty accounting associated with burning lots of carbon when this action has lots of environmental penalties but utterly inadequate economic penalties, and I'm tempted to put in my two cents on that...

But then President Barack Obama issued his first signing statement. Just like his predecessor had a tendency to do, President Obama has signed a bill into law accompanied with a statement that says, in effect, that he's going to ignore portions of the law in question.

It's basically a line-item-veto by another name.

In December 2007, candidate Obama clearly stated that he would not use signing statements in this fashion.

I will not use signing statements to nullify or undermine congressional instructions as enacted into law. The problem with this administration is that it has attached signing statements to legislation in an effort to change the meaning of the legislation, to avoid enforcing certain provisions of the legislation that the President does not like, and to raise implausible or dubious constitutional objections to the legislation. The fact that President Bush has issued signing statements to challenge over 1100 laws – more than any president in history – is a clear abuse of this prerogative. No one doubts that it is appropriate to use signing statements to protect a president's constitutional prerogatives; unfortunately, the Bush Administration has gone much further than that.

It appears, though, that President Obama has just used a signing statement for this very purpose. Rather than veto a law with provisions that he claims are unconstitutional, President Obama has chosen to sign the law accompanied with a statement saying he's going to ignore some bits.

I voted for Obama. I'm disappointed.

That said, this is the Omnibus spending bill we're talking about. If the president didn't sign it into law then it would force a government shutdown. And since the previous administration had demonstrated the efficacy of a signing statement as a line-item veto then why not use it as one?

I'm glad I'm not the president. I'm glad I don't have to make the decision between 3 bad options:

• Sign the law and enact it as written
• Veto the bill and cause a government shutdown
• Compromise my principles and leave it for the Supreme Court to sort out, possibly years from now.

Obama has done some amazing things in his first two months in office. Too bad he's done this and some other less amazing things, too.

UPDATE: CBS has the best article I've seen so far regarding the signing of the spending bill. Its article also includes the full text of the signing statement that accompanied the new law. For that matter, CBS also has an article covering a memo the Obama administration released on Monday regarding signing statements and their use by the Bush administration.