From the candidate who promised to get rid of Gitmo in a year:

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

http://news.yahoo.com/obama-signs-defense-bill-despite-reservations-200818531.html

^That One BilllTM is now law. The President expressed severe reservations about it but still signed it into law anyway. To me if he really expressed reservations about it and did not want to object to it becoming law he could simply have refused to sign it or to return it and thus let it become law without his signature. Signing it indicates President Obama's objections to this as a law are a mite bit.....hypocritical. I also think that the practice of including provisions like this in bills where the overall thing includes other, necessary actions is one reason why there should be a constitutional amendment to permit a line-item veto. I also view the further extension of the government's coercive power since the first attempt at a Patriot Act in the 1990s to be a deplorable and worrying trend and hope we can all agree on that much. Your thoughts?

Comments

[musicpsych.livejournal.com]

I was glad to see this quote: "My administration will not authorize the indefinite military detention without trial of American citizens," Obama said in the signing statement. "Indeed, I believe that doing so would break with our most important traditions and values as a nation." Of course, there's talk, and then there's action. We'll see what happens with that...

This is supposed to be the full signing statement: http://blogs.ajc.com/jamie-dupree-washington-insider/2011/12/31/obama-defense-bill-signing-statement/

[dreadfulpenny81.livejournal.com]

Me, too. Considering that was removed from the bill, I'm not exactly sure why people still have their panties in a twist.

[musicpsych.livejournal.com]

Now that I think about it, I'm not so sure about that. I think it's still part of the bill, but Obama just said that his administration wouldn't do anything with it. That might mean that a future administration can make use of it. I don't know...

[dreadfulpenny81.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I heard that last night, so that's an 'oops' on my part. He may say that now, but he's said a lot of things that he ended up going against later.