The Law of the Land
Apr 27th, 2006 at 4:51 pm by Susie
I don’t know if any of you have been following this, but there was something screwy with the budget bill (the House and the Senate didn’t pass the same versions) but Bush signed it, anyway.
John Conyers is filing in federal court tomorrow to ask the court to rule on it:
After consulting with some of the foremost constitutional experts in the nation, I determined that one group of people are injured by the entire bill: Members of the House. We were deprived of our right to vote on a bill that is now being treated as the law of the land.
So, I am going to court. With many of my Democratic Colleagues (list appended at the bottom of this diary), I plan to file suit tomorrow in federal district court in Detroit against the President, members of the Cabinet and other federal officers seeking to have a simple truth confirmed: a bill not passed by the House and Senate is not a law, even if the President signs it. As such, the Budget bill cannot be treated as the law of the land.
As many of you know, I have become increasingly alarmed at the erosion of our constitutional form of government. Whether through the Patriot Act, the President’s Secret Domestic Spying program, or election irregularities and disenfranchisement, our fundamental freedoms are being taken away. Nothing to me is more stark than this, however. If a President does not need one House of Congress to pass a law, what’s next?
Well, what’s next is audaciously proceeding in a way that means the President does not need voters to have an election.
No, that’s a few steps further on. The next step is choosing between the House and Senate versions of a bill when signing it into law.