Obama Wields His ... Autopen?

[TimLighter]

Heard this today on NPR. It seems that Obama has scored another first for his administration.

May 27, 2011
As the news broke on Friday that President Obama signed the Patriot Act extension from France via autopen, you could almost hear thousands of Americans asking in unison, "What's an autopen?"

Well, it's a device that's often used by rock stars or sports heroes and yes, the president of the United States, usually to sign letters. This is the first time we know of that an autopen has signed a bill into law, though its use was carefully considered by the Justice Department in the George W. Bush administration.(snip)

"This is an issue that in the past had come up a couple times, but it had always come up in kind of urgent circumstances," says former Deputy Attorney General Howard Nielson.

President Clinton was in Turkey when a bill funding the government had to be signed, and President Reagan was in a similar situation while in China. In both cases, the Justice Department decided it was safer to fly the bill halfway around the world, rather than sign it with an autopen. After all, the Constitution says of the president's role in making a law, "if he approve, he shall sign it."(snip)

But in 2005, President George W. Bush's Office of Legal Counsel considered the question and issued a decision, written by Nielson. It's 29 pages long, but it essentially says that what matters is the president's decision to approve a bill, not the mechanics of how it is signed.

So Bush's Legal Counsel seems to have approved but it wasn't used. President Obama is only following Bush precedent.

http://www.npr.org/2011/05/27/136717719/obama-wields-his-autopen

[customerserviceguy]

1. We may as well have a computer as President

Just some self-intelligent machine that decides what is 'right' for us.

The Founding Fathers would be aghast.

[Alexander]

2. Maybe someone will make a legal argument that Obama's signature wasn't valid

And that the PATRIOT Act is therefore no longer in effect.

[xoom]

3. we can only hope.

[tekisui]

4. Maybe Obama couldn't bring himself to actually sign it with his own hand.

Knowing that he shouldn't.

[AlabamaLibrul]

5. He could veto it if he really feels that way. It'd get defeated of course but I think the people

would appreciate it.

It's a very simple process -- either you do and say what you mean or you don't. The logic bending is getting very old and it is damned embarrassing that the ally of the people on this one is Rand Fucking Paul.

[grasswire]

6. I don't like this.

An autopen signature has always been regarded as ersatz to some degree. Don't like it at all.

[mwb970]

7. Strange to hear this fetishization of a signature here.

If the bill is considered legally passed, why is the signature of such all-consuming importance? Would the Founders truly be "aghast" at this? (I would think it would be today's republicans that left them aghast.)

[TimLighter]

8. Tell that to the mortgage holders scammed by the robo-signers

You can't just change the rules to suit your own sensibilities.

[dsc]

9. that is completely different

the problem with the robosigners were that they didn't, as they signed that they did, check the documents they were attesting were valid. Here, no one disputes that Obama agrees with the law becoming law.

[TimLighter]

11. It goes to issue of properly signed documents. n/t

[mwb970]

10. Oh I'm sorry, I thought we were talking about Obama and his autopen. /nt