Can someone tell me where in the law presidential signing statements

are allowed to overrule congress, and is essence thwart laws congress has passed?

Nope! Nothing there!

When Bush ignores the laws he himself has signed, and laws signed by his predecessors, he is in gross violation of his oath of office and, very likely, is engaging in treason.

I think I remember hearing that the Democrats were persuing some type of action on Bush's use of signing statements.

No one has held Bush accountable for the myriad of laws he's broken, so he keeps doing what he wants. Hopefully the new Congress will start acting as Congress should and stop him. The old Congress didn't do shit.

here.

I think this is the gist of his argument:

Bush is using signing statements like line item vetoes. Yet the Supreme Court has held the line item vetoes are unconstitutional. In 1988, in Clinton v. New York, the High Court said a president had to veto an entire law: Even Congress, with its Line Item Veto Act, could not permit him to veto provisions he might not like.

The Court held the Line Item Veto Act unconstitutional in that it violated the Constitution's Presentment Clause. That Clause says that after a bill has passed both Houses, but before it becomes a Law, it must be presented to the President, who shall sign it if he approves it, but return it - that is, veto the bill, in its entirety-- if he does not.

Following the Court's logic, and the spirit of the Presentment Clause, a president who finds part of a bill unconstitutional, ought to veto the entire bill -- not sign it with reservations in a way that attempts to effectively veto part (and only part) of the bill. Yet that is exactly what Bush is doing. The Presentment Clause makes clear that the veto power is to be used with respect to a bill in its entirety, not in part.

If the bill is popular he can say he signed it. If it's not popular he can say he didn't really mean it. Win-win as far as Shrub's concerned. Not flip-floppy at all.

ridiculous signing statements. I am certain more legal challenges will come from the Democrats.

he can do anything he wants. Absent those two bodies, we have only the military on which to pin our hopes (a Damoclean sword best averted at all costs).

Signing statements have been used rarely in the past in an effort to clarify the bill, not to negate it.

job of saving America. :sarcasm:

There is no such thing as a "signing statement" in the Constitution, either a signed bill, a vetoed bill or a pocket veto. That is it.

but the good puppy Congress wasn't about to challenge the little emperor.

Until somebody brings a case before the USSC and the right wing (in)justices get an attack of conscience, they will stand.

It's just another hideous abuse of power by a tinpot dictator who wasn't elected but who thinks he owns the country.

It's the golden rule - he who has the gold, makes the rules.

in a Bush presidential signing statement. ;-)