Political update

I haven't been posting about politics that often of late, but I saw something in today's New York Times that caught my attention. According to this article, the American Bar Association is accusing President Bush of acting unconstitutionally:

The panel acknowledged that earlier presidents, including Andrew Jackson, Ulysses S. Grant, Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin D. Roosevelt, had occasionally asserted the right to disregard provisions of a law to which they objected. Under Bill Clinton, the Justice Department told the White House that the president could “decline to execute unconstitutional statutes.”

But the panel said that Mr. Bush had expressed his objections more forcefully, more often and more systematically, “as a strategic weapon” to influence federal agencies and judges.

In his first term, the panel said, Mr. Bush raised 505 constitutional objections to new laws. On 82 occasions, he asserted that he alone could supervise, direct and control the operations of the executive branch, under a doctrine known as the “unitary executive.”

Whenever Congress directs the president to furnish information, Mr. Bush reserves the right to withhold it. When Congress imposes mandates and requirements on the executive branch, the president often says he will read them as advisory or “precatory.”

Granted, this is not news to those who have been paying attention. And, let's face it, we shouldn't be surprised by the administration acting without regard for the law.

In lighter political news, did anyone see South Florida's own Congressman Robert Wexler on the Colbert Report? Wow.

And, while you're at it, check out the A-Z of the Bush Administration.