Elizabeth Drew has an excellent piece in The New York Review of Books, eloquently titled, simply, Power Grab.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/19092
In it she demonstrates that Bush’s White House is carrying out attacks on every facet of the federal government that can be used to confront the power of the Executive through the cowardly (my designation, not hers) use of “signing statements.” She quotes Chuck Hagel
There’s a very clear pattern of aggressively asserting executive power, and the Congress has essentially been complicit in letting him do it. The key is that Bush has a Republican Congress; of course if it was a Clinton presidency we’d be holding hearings.
I think what Bush has done in this area is impeachable.
According to an article in The Boston Globe, Bush has claimed the right to ignore more than 750 laws enacted since he became president. He has unilaterally overruled Congress on a broad range of matters, refusing, for example, to accept a requirement for more diversity in awarding government science scholarships. He has overruled numerous provisions of congressional appropriations bills that he felt impinged on his executive power. He has also overruled Congress’s requirement that he report back to it on how he has implemented a number of laws. Moreover, he has refused to enforce laws protecting whistle-blowers and providing safeguards against political interference in federally funded research. Bush has also used signing statements to place severe limits on the inspectors general created by Congress to oversee federal activities, including two officials who were supposed to inspect and report to Congress on the US occupation of Iraq.
This is precisely what makes Bush a coward, the spots he has shown his entire easy silver spoon fed life.
The President could of course veto a bill he doesn’t like and publicly argue his objections to it. He would then run the risk that Congress would override his veto. Instead, Bush has chosen a method that is largely hidden and is difficult to challenge.
Rather than publicly stand up and battle a bill he doesn’t like, Bush skulks around under the cover of an imagined Executive Power and does what he wants anyway. Is there any greater indication of an infantile, immature human being than this? This is the Presidential equivalent of taking his toys and going home. Nah, that’s a much too easy description of what is at its heart a fascist coup d’etat
