Stand Tall for What You Believe In

In my book, one way I judge if a person genuinely believes that what they do and say is in the right is how they do or say it. My criteria is universal -- it doesn't matter what side of the political aisle a person chooses to stand on. It doesn't matter what religious or philosophical belief a person calls their own. It doesn't matter if your name is George Bush, Saddam Hussein or Mother Teresa.

If believe something to be true, stand tall in your belief. State up front why you believe your opinion is the right thing to do or way to act. By standing tall, you prove your belief or opinion is real -- not necessarily correct -- but what you truly believe in.

The recent revelations that [p]Resident Bush has signed over 750 Signing Statements which quietly announce his intentions to subvert federal law are a prime example of NOT standing tall. In public, Dubya says one thing; in private he often does the exact opposite!

According to an April 30 article in The Boston Globe,

Bush is the first president in modern history who has never vetoed a bill, giving Congress no chance to override his judgments. Instead, he has signed every bill that reached his desk, often inviting the legislation's sponsors to signing ceremonies at which he lavishes praise upon their work.

Then, after the media and the lawmakers have left the White House, Bush quietly files ''signing statements" -- official documents in which a president lays out his legal interpretation of a bill for the federal bureaucracy to follow when implementing the new law. The statements are recorded in the federal register.

In his signing statements, Bush has repeatedly asserted that the Constitution gives him the right to ignore numerous sections of the bills -- sometimes including provisions that were the subject of negotiations with Congress in order to get lawmakers to pass the bill. He has appended such statements to more than one of every 10 bills he has signed.

''He agrees to a compromise with members of Congress, and all of them are there for a public bill-signing ceremony, but then he takes back those compromises -- and more often than not, without the Congress or the press or the public knowing what has happened," said Christopher Kelley, a Miami University of Ohio political science professor who studies executive power.

What this tells me is that Dubya KNOWS what he's doing ain't right. He doesn't have the balls to do it in the light of day; he does what he does under the cover of darkness.

In essence, we have a coward in the White House!

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