Because I was very critical of President Obama’s  trying to defend some of the twisted logic and even more twisted morals of the Bush administration regarding the fate of innocent people tortured under American authority, I want to praise, praise. PRAISE Obama’s recent eliminating one of the most constitutionally destructive  actions of the Bush presidency: so-called “signing statements.”

Bush issued over 100 ‘signing statements’ indicating what parts of a law he signed he actually regarded as binding, and what parts he felt in his imperial majesty he could ignore.  President Obama has nullified the whole lot of them through an executive order.

Signing statements are not in the constitution.  We are a government of laws, not of men.  The president’s influence on legislation is reserved to his either signing or vetoing a bill.  If a veto will not work, he can allow it to become law without his signature.  But Congress not the President has primary law making power under our Constitution.  The President’s oath of office pledges him to uphold the Constitution, not become an elected Caesar.  Nothing so indicates the subversive influence of the Republican Party and so-called ‘conservatives’ as their endorsement of this imperial measure and contempt for the constitution.

President Obama’s repudiation of this lawlessness gives me hope that we may be headed back to being a nation governed more by law than by imperial edict.