Trampling on the Constitution

There have been many incompetent and even criminal actions taken by the Bush Administration, and among the most blatantly outrageous are the extent to which the president has issued "signing statements," those instructions published when signing a bill that tell federal agencies how to put new laws into practice.

George W. Bush has issued more than 1,100 signing statements, more than all previous presidents combined, and he has used them in an attempt to undo some of what the Constitution gives Congress the power to do. Frequently, he has instructed the federal government to dismiss certain sections of laws that he has signed. As chief executive, the president's sworn duty is to execute the laws. Congress writes them and the courts interpret them. To ignore the Constitution is the action of a tyrant, and a tyrant must be brought down.

The Boston Globe's Charlie Savage won a Pulitzer Prize this year for his stories on signing statements. Today he reports that the Government Accountability Office, the nonpartisan research arm of Congress, has done a study that shows government agencies are failing to follow through on some laws and that they are doing so in accordance with the signing statements. I'd submit that we are now facing the biggest "Constitutional crisis" since Watergate.

If we were not in the midst of a foreign occupation, I'd advocate that we immediately start composing articles of impeachment. As it is, we are in the quagmire of Iraq because of other criminal actions by this president and this administration -- actions that are also impeachable offenses. The often-complacent citizenry, however, might balk at such a drawn out and public battle in a time of war, and this might lead to a backlash against Democrats that ends with the election of another Republican president.

What to do?