Picking and Choosing...

About a week ago, the Bush administration, according to The New York Times, told congress that they were going to "bypass" a law that they didn't see fit to follow. The law "requires the [Department of Homeland Security's] chief privacy officer to report each year about Homeland Security activities tat affect privacy, and requires that the reports be submitted directly to Congress 'without any prior comment or amendment' by superiors at the department or the White House. The homeland security secretary, Michael Chertoff, said that the president didn't need to follow that particular law 'strictly' because it 'infringed' on the president's powers.'

The law in question, signed by President Bush August 2007, was originally put into place to serve as a 'checks & balances' of some sort. Given the Bush administrations past transgressions involving citizens’ privacy in combination with the secret activities of Guantanamo Bay, the law was supposed to give the system a little more transparency.

The deliberate disregard of the law, naturally, was not taken lightly by the Congress, republicans included. The ranking Republican of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Pennsylvania senator Arlen Spector, called Bush’s actions “unconstitutional. He said Mr. Bush should have vetoed the bill if he did not like the provision, and compared the situation to Mr. Bush’s frequent use of signing statements to reserve a right to bypass newly enacted laws.”

Politicians, and scholars alike, think it’s just another example of the Bush administration doing what it wants and how it wants. The question, however, is not so much about why the Bush administration does what it wants but more about why Congress doesn’t do much to stop it. The system of checks and balances was put into place so that when times like these arise, the legislative branch doesn’t have to feel helpless in comparison to the executive branch. Moreover, congressmen and women are voted into office by the people for the people. And according to PollingReport.com, the people are tired of the Bush administration’s cavalier ways of governing; only 29% approve of the job he’s doing. One would hope that politicians look at the polls and see that public is not happy. Hopefully they’ll do more to defend our rights and actually stand up to the administration on behalf of the people (isn’t that why we elected them?); it’s time they do more for the people.

Will they? Only time will tell.