More Obama Broken Promises: Presidential Signing Statements

by Maggie at Maggie's Notebook

One thing I know is true (one of Obama's favorite transitions) is...the campaign trail is a lying, cheating road to the Oval Office for four more years of lying and cheating. Congress has rebuked President Obama's Presidential Signings.

Thanks to Stop the ACLU.

This was then...

Obama on Presidential Signing

“What George Bush has been trying to do as part of his effort to accumulate more power in the presidency is he’s been saying ‘well I can basically change what Congress passed by attaching a letter saying I don’t agree with this part or I don’t agree with that part,” Obama said last year during a campaign stop. “I’m gonna’ choose to interpret it this way or that way.’ That’s not part of his power. But this is part of the whole theory of George Bush that he can make laws as he’s going along. I disagree with that. I taught the constitution for 10 years. I believe in the constitution, and I will obey the Constitution of the United States.
“We’re not going to use signing statements as a way of doing an end-run around Congress.”

This is now:

The House rebuked President Obama for trying to ignore restrictions to international aid payments, voting overwhelmingly for an amendment forcing the administration to abide by its constraints.

House members approved an amendment by a 429-2 vote to have the Obama administration pressure the World Bank to strengthen labor and environmental standards and require a Treasury Department report on World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) activities. The amendment to a 2010 funding bill for the State Department and foreign operations was proposed by Rep. Kay Granger (R-Texas), but it received broad bipartisan support.

The conditions on World Bank and IMF funding were part of the $106 billion war supplemental bill that was passed last month. Obama, in a statement made as he signed the bill, said that he would ignore the conditions. They would “interfere with my constitutional authority to conduct foreign relations by directing the Executive to take certain positions in negotiations or discussions with international organizations and foreign governments, or by requiring consultation with the Congress prior to such negotiations or discussions,” Obama said in the signing statement.

Hat tip: Hot Air

End Stop the ACLU

The Hill went on to report:

Senior Democrats and Republicans railed against the notion that the president could ignore a law they had passed and he had signed.

"We do this not just on behalf of this institution, but on behalf of this democracy," said Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.). "There's kind of a unilateralism, an undemocratic, unreachable way about these signing statements."

Frank and Rep. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) said that one way they could get presidents to stop issuing signing statements casting aside laws would be to refuse to fund their priorities. The amendment passed Thursday seeks to nullify Obama's signing statement by withholding funds from any agreement involving the Treasury Department that doesn't follow the conditions set out in the supplemental bill.

"The signal we send to the Treasury is very clear: Ignore statute at your peril," Kirk said.

Obama Citizenship: Lawsuits Continue

Cross-posted by Maggie at Maggie's Notebook

This video explains the role of a Constitutional Republic. If you believe that Barack Obama was "elected by the people" and as such our Constitution is not relevant in the 2008 Presidential election, think again. America is not a Democracy.

Scroll down for commentary on the Supreme Court's refusal to hear Leo Donofrio's case, and information on the latest citizenship lawsuit to be considered for review by Justice Scalia. View video at YouTube.com





On December 8th, the Supreme Court refused to hear Leo Donofrio's claim that Barack Obama was born a British citizen, and as such, is not constitutionally eligible to be the President of the United States. The case was dismissed without comment from the Justices - so once again, there is no hint of Obama's legitimacy or the lack of it.

The latest information in this saga came just after 7 pm on the 8th, from Leo Donofrio's website, NaturalBornCitizen.com.

Donofrio has participated in the preparation of another lawsuit known as Wrotnowski v. Bysiewicz. The Supreme Court Docket No. is 08A469:

Wrotnowski Application Referred to Full Court by Justice Scalia - Distributed for Conference on Dec 12 - Supplemental Brief to be Submitted Tomorrow

From the Press Release: December 8, 2008 7:20 p.m.

Cort Wrotnowski’s emergency application for a stay and/or injunction as to the Electoral College meeting on Dec. 15 was today referred to the full Court by the Honorable Associate Justice Anotonin Scalia. It has been distributed for Conference of Friday December 12. The official case name is WROTNOWSKI v. BYSIEWICZ, United States Supreme Court Docket No. 08A469.

The Wrotnowski Supreme Court application was prepared by Leo Donofrio, Esq. and is centered on the same issue from Donofrio’s case which was discussed by the Supreme Court in its conference of December 5 - whether Barack Obama is not eligible to the office of President due to the fact that he was a British citizen at the time of his birth.

Tomorrow, Dec. 9 - Cort Wrotnowski will submit a supplemental brief concerning the newly discovered ineligibility of twenty-first President Chester Arthur due to his having been born as a British subject. This is relevant to the case at hand in that Justice Gray - who wrote the seminal opinion in United States v. Wong Kim Arc - was appointed by Chester Arthur.

There is extensive information at the above link.

Another excellent place to keep on top of any and all lawsuits filed in the endeavor to make Obama prove that he is natural born, is America's Right. The blog owner, Jeff Schrieber, lives and works in Philadelphia and is a "Legal writer by day, exhausted law student by night... He broke the story of the first failed Philip Berg lawsuit.

For those advising that I just take a look at the Obama birth certificate on fightthesmears.com, I ask how you give validity to a birth certificate which documents no hospital where the birth took place, and is not signed by a doctor?

I do not know whether or not Barack Obama is a natural born citizen, and neither do you. I do know that if our President-elect had any respect for our Constitution, his proof of natural born status would have been provided immediately - and that proof would have included a delivering physician and a hospital name. Will we ever learn the truth, it's doubtful. Doesn't that make everyone feel comfortable and secure about our Constitutional Republic?

Related discourse on Constitutional Republics and Democracies:
United States Was Founded as a Constitutional Republic and Not a Democracy

Contrary to popular rhetoric, America was founded, not as a “democracy,” but as a constitutional republic--a political structure under which the government is bound by a written constitution to the task of protecting individual rights. “Democracy” does not mean a system that holds public elections for government officials; it means a system in which a majority vote rules everything and everyone, and in which the individual thus has no rights. In a democracy, observed James Madison in The Federalist Papers , “there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party or an obnoxious individual. Hence it is that such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention [and] have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property.”

Ron Paul: Constitutional Republic vs Democracy
Unlike a pure democracy, in a constitutional republic, citizens are not governed by the majority of the people but by the rule of law. Constitutional Republics are a deliberate attempt to hold in check the threat of mobocracy thereby protecting dissenting individuals from the tyranny of the majority by placing checks on the power of the majority of the population. The power of the majority of the people is checked by limiting that power to electing representatives who govern within limits of overarching constitutional law rather than the popular vote having legislative power itself. John Adams defined a constitutional republic as "a government of laws, and not of men."Also, the power of government officials is checked by allowing no single individual to hold executive, legislative and judicial powers. Instead these powers are separated into distinct branches that serve as a check and balance on each other. A constitutional republic is designed so that "no person or group [can] rise to absolute power."

The original framers of the United States Constitution were notably cognizant of what they perceived as a danger of majority rule in oppressing freedom and liberty of the individual. For example, James Madison, in Federalist Paper No. 10, advocates a constitutional republic over a democracy to protect the individual from the majority. The framers carefully created the institutions within the Constitution and the United States Bill of Rights. They kept what they believed were the best elements of majority rule. But they were mitigated by a constitution with protections for individual liberty, a separation of powers.