Sometimes the Metaphors Just Write Themselves

Your National Security State at Work:

Congress officially passed an extension of the Patriot Act [Thursday night], just hours before key provisions of the national security law were due to lapse at midnight.

President Obama, currently on an overseas trip, is not at the White House to sign the bill, a requirement for the measure to become law.

So the White House will use an autopen — a machine that replicates Obama’s signature — to sign the extension, according to White House spokesman Nick Shapiro.

WorldNetDaily will be happy to know that Obama really is capable of forging documents.

Oh, but a Deputy Attorney General has, um, signed off on the process:

“We examine the legal understanding of the word ‘sign’ at the time the Constitution was drafted and ratified and during the early years of the Republic. We find that, pursuant to this understanding, a person may sign a document by directing that his signature be affixed to it by another… Reading the constitutional text in light of this established legal understanding, we conclude that the President need not personally perform the physical act of affixing his signature to a bill to sign it within the meaning of Article I, Section 7 [of the Constitution].”

That would be Howard C. Nielson. Of the Office of Legal Counsel. In 2005.

Right around the time the OLC was justifying torture.

Obama Won’t Personally Sign Patriot Act Extension [ABC]

nojo
1:00 pm • Friday • May 27, 2011
comment »

7 Comments

Dodgerblue

1:20 pm • Friday • May 27, 2011

A pantograph. There’s a word you don’t see often. No, it’s not a reference to assless chaps.

al2o3cr

1:32 pm • Friday • May 27, 2011

Hey, the mortgage securitization and foreclosure businesses have been doing this for years – only they figured out it was cheaper to just use people…

jwmcsame

2:48 pm • Friday • May 27, 2011

thomas jefferson, that teabagger’s teabagger who really wasn’t a teabagger and one of america’s baby’s daddies had a machine like that. he invented it so he could write the same book twice at the same time. he obviously thought so highly of his own scribblings and doodles that one copy would just not suffice so he doubled up every stroke of the pen.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polygraph_%28duplicating_device%29

nojo

2:55 pm • Friday • May 27, 2011

@jwmcsame: Also, since I couldn’t work the reference in, that picture is Truman’s autopen machine.

JNOV is rockin’ the Paradise TONIGHT

7:42 pm • Friday • May 27, 2011

Wow. Just read about these shenanigans on the NYT. Does that mean we can challenge this law?

flypaper

8:29 pm • Friday • May 27, 2011

@jwmcsame: @nojo: A boob for all seasons.

CheapBoy

11:31 pm • Friday • May 27, 2011

So, some other bastard can sign my cheques? Well fuck that for a laugh! Let alone legistalaion! (But really I’m more worried about my cheques)