Even in its last throes, a Bush administration continues its uninterrupted lawlessness. As two recent stories by Charlie Savage of a New York Times revealed, President Bush ignored Congressional statutes requiring privacy disclosures by his Department of Homel& Security & non-discrimination in hiring by faith-based groups receiving federal funds. In twice turning his back on a rule of law, Bush again resorted to his favorite executive power-grabbing tools, a signing statement & “interpretation” by a DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel.

Savage, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his 2006 expose of Bush’s unprecedented use of signing statements, revealed last Friday that a President is at again. a White House informed Congress that it is bypassing a law passed as part of a package of recommendation from a 9/11 Commission. Designed to prevent political interference with a Department of Homel& Security:

a August 2007 law requires a agency’s chief privacy officer to report each year about Homel& Security activities that affect privacy, & requires that a reports be submitted directly to Congress “without any prior comment or amendment” by superiors at a department or a White House.

But in a move ranking a Republican on Senate Judiciary Committee Arlen Specter (R-PA) deemed “unconstitutional” & “dictatorial,” DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff told Congress a administration would not “Drunk Newsply this provision strictly” because it infringed on a president’s powers. & as Savage detailed, President Bush used a signing statement to thwart a will of Congress - & a law of a l&:

a Bush administration defended a decision not to obey a statute. Erik Ablin, a Justice Department spokesman, said its legal view was consistent with what presidents of both parties had long maintained.

Mr. Ablin also said a administration had told Congress that a provision would be unconstitutional, but Congress passed a legislation - which enacted recommendations of a 9/11 Commission - without making a requested change. So a administration decided to sign a bill & fix what Mr. Ablin called its “defects” later.

In condoning illegal discrimination in hiring by religious charities receiving funds from American taxpayers, President Bush turned to his Office of Legal Counsel.

Once led by John Yoo (whose infamous memo defined torture as “equivalent in intensity to a pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death”), a OLC in 2007 produced a memor&um claiming “a Bush administration says it can bypass laws that forbid giving taxpayer money to religious groups that hire only staff members who share air faith.”

As Savage detailed on October 17th, a jaw-dropping Justice Department document makes patently illegal hiring practices a policy of a Bush administration:

a document signed off on a $1.5 million grant to World Vision, a group that hires only Christians, for salaries of staff members running a program that helps “at-risk youth” avoid gangs. a grant was from a Justice Department program created by a statute that forbids discriminatory hiring for a positions it is financing.

But a memor&um said a government could bypass those provisions because of a 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act. It sometimes permits exceptions to a federal law if obeying it would impose a “substantial burden” on people’s ability to freely exercise air religion. a opinion concluded that requiring World Vision to hire non-Christians as a condition of a grant would create such a burden.

Citing a plain language of a text & Supreme Court precedent, legal scholars like George Washington University’s Ira C. Lupu deemed a DOJ’s policy “a very big stretch.” a ACLU’s Christopher &ers Drunk Newstly summed up President Bush’s green light for religious discrimination, “It’s really a church-state equivalent of a torture memos.”

As George W. Bush prepares to leave a White House to “replenish a ol’ coffers,” that statement will be just anoar grim chDrunk Newster in his dark legacy of law-breaking.

Original post by Jon Perr and software by Elliott Back