President George Bush has "quietly claimed the authority" to disobey more than 750 laws enacted since he took office throught the use of presidential signing statements.
Charlie Savage, a reporter for The Boston Globe's Washington, D.C., bureau, was awarded a 2007 Pulitzer Prize for his work on presidential signing statements.
Savage writes:
Among the laws Bush said he can ignore are military rules and regulations, affirmative-action provisions, requirements that Congress be told about immigration services problems, ''whistle-blower" protections for nuclear regulatory officials, and safeguards against political interference in federally funded research.
Legal scholars say the scope and aggression of Bush's assertions that he can bypass laws represent a concerted effort to expand his power at the expense of Congress, upsetting the balance between the branches of government.
The Constitution is clear in assigning to Congress the power to write the laws and to the president a duty ''to take care that the laws be faithfully executed." Bush, however, has repeatedly declared that he does not need to ''execute" a law he believes is unconstitutional.
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