This appeared on Eric Alterman’s blog at MSNBC today. I am reproducing it here it in its entirety:
Mr. Alterman:
I have been
reading media and legal materials (including your piece, “Think Again:
Signing the Constitution Away,” at the Center for American Progress), here,
about the unitary executive and the Bush administration’s use of
presidential signing statements. I think this is an important topic.Therefore,
I have collected all presidential signing statements from January 19,
2001, through June 12, 2006, and posted a temporary webpage that
provides full text of all the bill signing statements issued by
President George W. Bush. By setting out the full text of the signing
statements, this Web page should remedy complaints that the statements
are difficult to find. To help readers verify text, the Web site also
provides links to the full text of the same documents at the White
House and Government Printing Office (GPO) Web sites.The Web site also provides links to the full text of the laws that are the subject of signing statements.
I
am contacting law schools, scholars, attorneys, and commentators,
hoping to find a permanent home for this Web page. Please feel free to
pass the URLs to others who may be interested in either: (1) giving
this information a permanent home on the Web, or (2) using the
information (including stealing and distributing it).The main URLS are:
I
hope that the Web site will: (1) help scholars and commentators write
intelligently and authoritatively about presidential signing statements
and the unitary executive, and (2) save attorneys a great deal of time
rooting these statements (and the laws to which they apply) out of the
GPO and White House websites.The site is not pretty, but it is useful.
In sum, I want to give this information to someone else. My offer is free to any taker.
Thank
you for your time. I enjoyed your article and have linked to it on my
site. I appreciate your writing well on such an important topic.—Joyce
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