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Subscribe to RSSAn intrepid White House aide’s nail-bitten mission to board a transcontinental commercial flight and hand-deliver crucial national security legislation to the president before midnight WOULD have made a great subplot in the next Jason Bourne blockbuster.
Which is probably why the White House opted for an autopen instead.
Hill sources say there had been a plan to have a White House aide hand-carry legislation re-authorizing the Patriot Act to Europe, where President Barack Obama is traveling for G8 talks. But a delayed vote process meant that the bill might not have reached the signer-in-chief before the act expired at midnight.
So last night, the president made history by authorizing the first use of an autopen signature for a bill to become law.
At least one Republican lawmaker now says those robotic scratches of ink could set “a dangerous precedent” for constitutional shenanigans ahead.
Georgia Rep. Tom Graves -- who voted against the PATRIOT Act extension -- put his concerns in writing to the president today.
After quoting Article I, section 7 of the United States Constitution in a short letter, he then, politely, assigned the president homework.
He asked that Obama provide a "detailed, written explanation of your constitutional authority to assign a surrogate the responsibility of signing bills passed by Congress into law."
Graves may want an answer, but when Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was asked about “Autopen-gate and the Mystery of the Secret Signature” he said, “I haven't looked at the legality of it and therefore don't have an opinion to express on it.”
In 2005, the then Deputy Assistant Attorney General Howard C. Neilson, Jr., (who is getting a significant amount of Google play today no doubt) released an opinion that deemed the use of an autopen to sign a bill constitutional:
“We conclude that neither past practice nor previous opinions relating to the signing requirement of Article I, Section 7 foreclose reading that requirement in a manner that is consistent with the traditional common law understanding of ‘sign,’ with attorney general and Department of Justice opinions applying that understanding to statutory signing requirements, and with the settled interpretation of the related presentment and return provisions.”
But what IS an autopen?
Bob Olding, the owner of the Damilic Corporation, one of what he says are only two companies in the United States that make and sell the devices described it like this:
“There are basically two kinds that we provide. One is mostly mechanical and that is the old classic autopen. It has a large plastic wheel in it ... as that rotates between two levers it pushes the pen in the appropriate direction.”
They can cost anywhere from $2000 to $10000 and it’s another $175 to create each signature template that tells the machine what to do. The more expensive machines are automated and involve programming your handwriting into a computer.
When asked if he had sold a machine to the White House or possibly Sarah Palin, he said, “I couldn’t tell you if we did.” He keeps his client list very hush hush but said it includes large corporations, universities and political campaigns.
NBC's Kelly O'Donnell contributed to this report.
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Heck, I'm for electing the computer President now. We may as well, since Obama can't speak without a teleprompter, can't sign without an autopen and can't produce a birth certificate without a laser printer. It seems to me that we don't have the first Black President, what we've got is the first USB President.
He can't speak English, he speaks a strange language called bureaucratese which is only understood in capitol buildings and by specially trained translators called lawyers. A "job saved" is the same as a "job created" and throwing handfuls of money at failed businesses is called "stimulus" even as they enter bankruptcy court. It's an amazing dialect, this bureaucratese, but as so few Americans actually speak this language Obama cannot be called able to speak to the people.
How dare more Republicans not object to this outrage!! Republicans must challenge this blatantly unconstitutional action undertaken by Obama so that the American People can once again be free*.
*From all tyranny**.
**...especially that of the Patriot Act.
So please Republicans, please establish that Obama didn't actually extend the Patriot Act.
Pretty please?
Perhaps, if this autopen issue is found to be not an authentic signature, then the "patriot act' would be null and void. It would be an end to this violation of our rights. This is not a right wing or left wing matter, but this patriot act is a violation of all our rights.
Let's say, for the sake of argument, that some Judge in some high court finds that this signature is not really a signature. What happens then? Simple, Obama grabs the nearest pen, signs it for real and the argument is over. The Judge then looks like an idiot. Moreover, even if Obama had not signed it, and didn't do anything at all, didn't veto it, didn't even look at it, just let it collect dust, what happens then? Well, if it was passed by both houses of Congress and sits for ten days without action by the President, then it becomes law without the President's signature anyway. So, even if the autopen is found to be a non-signature, the Patriot Act would go into effect next week no matter what (short of a Presidential Veto which ain't gonna happen).
Does anyone else find it odd that during Obama's first part of his presidency there was an issue that came up and he was in a foreign land (vacation) at the time and now he is again in a foreign land (vacation) at the end of his presidency when important issues developed homeland?
Convenient way to implement an auto-sign. We are so advanced now we don't have to get out of bed to do our job.
Isn't there some well paid government official who's job it is to negotiate and correspond with foreign governments (Secretary of State maybe)?
If our government is scared after publicly killing such a well known world terrorist that our president and others felt it was time to reinstate the Patriot Act, why is one third of our government not present in our country?
If I was a terrorist I would NOT be targeting America. I would be scared silly of us. We dumped trillions of dollars and 10 years to catch the mastermind of 911. Crazy mastermind people never want to die.
I ask, "What is freedom without the Bill of Rights"?
I will go down on the side of the signature being legal.
Having said that I wonder why they did not e-mail the bill to the President, Print out a hard copy, then have him sign it.
Considering the questionable constitutionality of the Patriot Act to begin with, this equally questionable "signing", makes it all the more likely that someone will not only be willing to resist implementation of the act by force, but that they would be legally within their rights to do so.
Let's remember that if the first Nazis who went out to gather up Jews for the concentration camps, had come back missing their heads, the "final solution" would have undoubtedly been a lot less final!
Rep Tom Graves can go pound sand.
Screw Republicans. If it were a Republican president, they wouldn't have any complaints. The same can be said for their fake enthusiasm about cutting the deficit. If we had a Republican president, they would shovel him all the money he asked for. Republicans have absolutely zero credit!
There is no story here America! This is a whole lot about nothing. The "Gross Odd People" (GOP) love to attack this President on everything. The GOP facts are false, their rational is ruthless, and their emotional behavior is treasonous. For the last Two Years the poltical puking is horrific, and their cultural corruption is just mentally backwards. The GOP "Idiots Of Ignorance" continue to spew on wearing their rental clown outfits. They continue to spew such ignorance about the President needing teleprompters. The nation now watches the GOP/RNC take another chance to rip on the President over nothing! Stilck to the true facts America, and not this "Crazy Conservative Crap!" This is another "Distract and Attack" poltical plan of the GOP.
We've been using a digital signature in the Army for years. You simply insert your common access card (CAC) into a CAC Reader enabled computer, type in your code, and digitally sign the document. Why is this such a big deal. If you can verbally "sign" a contract, why can't the President autosign a bill?
Thank you Mr. Graves, in standing up for the United States Constitution, just as you swore you would.