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Patriot Act Extension By Autopen Raises Questions for Congressman
Okian Warrior writes "Congress passed the [Patriot act extension] bill Thursday night, shortly before certain provisions of the Patriot Act were set to expire. However, Mr. Obama could not sign the bill right away in person, since he was in Europe for the G8 Summit. In order to sign the bill before the measures expired, he authorized the use of the autopen machine, which holds a pen and signs his actual signature. Republican Rep. Tom Graves of Georgia sent President Obama a letter today questioning the constitutionality."
I for one welcome our new law-signing robotic overlords.
... I'm... I'm sorry.
There's a spot in User Info for World of Warcraft account names? Really?
I'd like to question the constitutionality of a lot more than just how it was signed.
I'm sure this is important. But given the bill in question, it seems a lot like complaining about the color of shirt the rapist wears while they're pounding you in the ass.
How did this Rep. Graves vote on the act? (I know it says "R" but might as well ask for the sake of thoroughness). If it was a "Nay" then it might be getting "dug out now" as a last-ditch effort to DTRT.
YES
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
The device is called an "undergrad".
Because you can't extend a law which has expired. The provisions would have expired at midnight this morning, before the bill could have become law by default. This would have (arguably) rendered the extension null and void.
Hm... very interesting. He actually seems to have voted against it. "Graves said he believes the act gave too much power to the government, a problem cited by many of the people who helped elect him." Source here
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
Unless the constitution outright states that the President must sign with pen-and-ink in person, I think there's enough precedent for many levels of government, foreign governments and extranational institutions accepting autopen signatures to render the constitutionality of the question moot.
This is what Article I Section 2 says:
All it says is that the President has to sign the bill for it to become law (except where Congress gets the 2/3s to override a Presidential veto). Since autopens have for a long time been seen as legitimate signatures, I doubt very much that there is any question as to the constitutionality of this particular signature.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Hmm, interesting that you call one of the few who stood up and voted against the law a "partisan hack". It would seem you can't see past the D or R next to a person's name. There's a name for that I think. It's right on the tip of my tongue...
Look, I'm not into the whole "political" thing.
But it isn't "Mr." Obama; it's Mr. President or President Obama.
You could also use The President or POTUS.
Saying "Mr." Obama isn't just disrespecting him, it's disrespecting The Office of the President. It's tacky.
I'd rather you do it wrong, than for me to have to do it at all.
"Congress bumped up against the deadline mainly because of the stubborn resistance from a single senator, Republican freshman Rand Paul of Kentucky, who saw the terrorist-hunting powers as an abuse of privacy rights. Paul held up the final vote for several days while he demanded a chance to change the bill to diminish the government's ability to monitor individual actions. The bill passed the Senate 72-23."
- from http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/05/26/politics/main20066686.shtml
Here's to the crazy ones
He's one of only 31 Republicans to have voted against it. And since this is his first term in federal government, he has never voted on it in the past. So I guess he deserves credit for the vote. Of course, he also voted to end Medicare, prevent the FCC from enforcing Net Neutrality, shut down Planned Parenthood, and keep troops in Afghanistan for longer.
So fuck him.
Maybe there should be an official presidential robot. The secret service could make a new one for each new president. The robot would be humanoid in appearance and could stand in for the president in situations where he might be in danger such as public appearances and sleeping with the first lady (the robot would of course be anatomically correct). The robot would be teleoperated from special rooms in airforce one and the whitehouse. This would enable the president to use telepresence to sign bills like this as well as providing a "Buster" like capability to survive serious incidents. Come to think of it there could be a whole fleets of president shaped robots, so that the president could attend events in different parts of the world, separated by only a few minutes.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
So worst case here, the PATRIOT Act renewal didn't take effect but will soon.
A bill that extends a law doesn't copy the law into a new law, it merely amends the expiration date that is written in the existing law. You can't amend a law that has expired, and a bill that is implicitly signed due to sitting for 10 days is not retroactive to when it was forwarded to the President, so it would have effectively become useless had it not been signed last night.
News-anchor?
ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI
Of course not. However, this "Made in China" engraving makes me seriously question that the Autopen is a natural born citizen.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
When you put it that way, he sounds like a great guy with strong libertarian credentials. I think I'll send him a donation for his re-election campaign.
And we don't need the real Obama at all.
... so the president can find out what's in it!
"They let me sign checks with a rubber stamp!" -H. Simpson.
MSIE: The world's most standards-complaint web browser.
"there is no constitutional definition of signed..."
Nor is there any need for one. The meaning of what was written was fully understood by contemporary society at the time, and it is no more ambiguous now than it was then.
Would you also insist that the Constitution explicitly define "state", and "people", and "is"? Of course not. That would be ridiculous, right?
I get so tired of people trying to "interpret" what the Constitution means, when its meaning is already quite well understood.
What does preventing one's taxes from being spent on something they disagree with have to do with having final say over women's bodies? Go spend your own money on whatever you want to.
BTW, I am for at least many of the programs/practices of Planned Parenthood, but think it (and tons of other programs) shouldn't be paid for with my taxes. (Including lots of subsidies for things I agree with, such as solar panels... But just like Ron Paul takes the tax write-offs he is entitled to, I would take the subsidy if I installed panels while the program was in place... I would still vote to end the program, however.)