So Much For Checks and Balances

LISTENING TO:
Horses
Patti Smith

I first heard this album – on a record – in the apartment of a friend in college (~1980). She liked Patti Smith; I’d heard of her, but – shrug – whatever.

I heard the full album and quickly bought same.

I recently purchased the CD and am totally enjoying same. Patti Smith is not to everyone’s taste, but damn she is good:

“Jesus died for somebody’s sins, but not mine…”

All music

The Dictator President of the United States has made, to me, another end run around the whole constitutional process with his recent bill signing:

President Bush, again defying Congress, says he has the power to edit the Homeland Security Department’s reports about whether it obeys privacy rules while handling background checks, ID cards and watchlists.

In the law Bush signed Wednesday, Congress stated no one but the privacy officer could alter, delay or prohibit the mandatory annual report on Homeland Security department activities that affect privacy, including complaints.

But Bush, in a signing statement attached to the agency’s 2007 spending bill, said he will interpret that section “in a manner consistent with the President’s constitutional authority to supervise the unitary executive branch.”

Associated Press, via MSN

Yet, with all the FoleyGate press coverage, this privacy issue is buried.

As are we.