[... riped from "Altercation" by Eric Alterman, MSNBC.com, June 29, 2006]

Signing the Constitution Away:

Isn’t it kind of amazing that after all this time, Charlie Savage of the Boston Globe remains just about the only reporter in America interested in the story that George W. Bush feels he can ignore the laws of the land whenever it strikes his fancy? Here is today’s entry about potential Senate action. Here is a page 09 story in the Washington Post with the ho-hum headline, “Bush's Challenges of Laws He Signed Is Criticized.”

Dan Froomkin writes a similar complaint here though he misses the column cited below.

Patriot, Joyce Green of Oklahoma writes me:

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 for presidential signing statements are:

* Full Annotated Text of all PSSs
* Full Unannotated Text of All PSSs
* Index to PSSs

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