Patriot Act Extension By Autopen Raises Questions for Congressman 247
Okian Warrior writes "Congress passed the [Patriot act extension] bill Thursday night, shortly before certain provisions of the Patriot Act were set to expire. However, Mr. Obama could not sign the bill right away in person, since he was in Europe for the G8 Summit. In order to sign the bill before the measures expired, he authorized the use of the autopen machine, which holds a pen and signs his actual signature. Republican Rep. Tom Graves of Georgia sent President Obama a letter today questioning the constitutionality."
I for one... (Score:4, Funny)
I for one welcome our new law-signing robotic overlords.
... I'm... I'm sorry.
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Back in the day, there was a gizmo in Kansas City Railroad Station that transmitted position from a pen to a remote pen via telephone. One could exchange signatures and short notes.
Of course fax has been around for a long time.
--
Read My Sig.
Questioning the constitutionality... (Score:5, Insightful)
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I'd like to question the constitutionality of a lot more than just how it was signed.
My thought too. He's got no problem with the law, but doesn't like the mechanics of getting it signed?
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Re:Questioning the constitutionality... (Score:5, Informative)
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He voted against the law.
http://tomgraves.house.gov/News/DocumentSingle.aspx?DocumentID=224632 [house.gov]
Good for him. Maybe he's raising the technical issue as a last-ditch effort to obstruct it.
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Yes, and while I wish him the best of luck, it also comes off as a bit pissy. "Autopen" already seems overly ceremonious -- what, they can't fax, email, etc, and have him print and sign that? Even that seems backwards compared to, say, cryptographic keys, but really, having a device that physically signs for him seems like overkill, and questioning it on a legal/constitutional basis is missing the point -- the President approved it.
So, while I do think it'd be cool if he could block it this way, and it'd be
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cryptanalyst has fuck all to do with checking written signatures.
Human beings naturally sign it slightly differently each time they sign their name and autopen is just a fancy version of the "signature" stamps that you'll see in many offices.
the fact that the president was verifiably nowhere near the document when it was signed would be better proof than any "cryptanalyst".
Could he simply have his signature cut into a stamp and ask someone to stamp things for him when he's not there to sign stuff personally
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"Could he simply have his signature cut into a stamp and ask someone to stamp things for him when he's not there to sign stuff personally? If not I can't see how autopen could be legal."
Mod parent up. If a rubber stamp is unconstitutional, then a goddamned machine is, too.
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Go back to SA, filthy goon.
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Oh, he not only read and understood it, he publicly spoke about how glad he was that it had been extended.
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I think it was a timing issue as stated and you are reading way more into it.
I mean seriously, would you rather the president spend a couple million in tax payer dollars jetting back to the US off schedule just to sign it, then jet back to his Vacation/foreign meeting? Or should he just approve the use of a device that is normally used to sign autographed pictures and crap that aren't policy related but certain members of the public demand.
I don't Care for Obama, but this was the right call considering the
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"I mean seriously, would you rather the president spend a couple million in tax payer dollars jetting back to the US..."
YES! There are reasons why things are done the way they are.
Next thing you know, you'll be saying the President can't appoint people to office when Congress is not in session. Hey, that's just a "technicality"! Our CongressCritters could just fax in their disapproval!
Bullshit. Laws are laws, the Constitution is the Constitution. I will not stand by while other people -- no matter how well-meaning they may be -- try to "interpret" it out of existence.
Forest/trees problem? (Score:2, Informative)
I'm sure this is important. But given the bill in question, it seems a lot like complaining about the color of shirt the rapist wears while they're pounding you in the ass.
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The comments are full of hilarity (Score:4, Insightful)
YES
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I do recall the PATRIOT act being one of the issues Teleprompter Jesus ran on. He and his democratic minions bitching about eavesdropping on Grandma's phone calls. Now our Dear Reader is renewing the law he railed against so he could get elected. Nice. Real nice.
The democrats took Bush, painted him brown and put a D behind his name.
O=W
O is merely continuing every policy Bush initiated...
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Obama isn't just continuing, but where Bush drew the line(and he did several times), the Dem's haven't found a piece of privacy invading or unconstitutional law they didn't like. You'll find that many republican still do support things like the patriot act within reason, that being the key part. However most things within the last several years have come to ahead. And well, would have if Obama and Holder actually trusted the people doing the intel work.
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At first I thought you meant painting him brown in the ideological sense.
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No, you and I might wish he hadn't signed it at all, but the "whiny republicans" definitely do not share our wishes. They voted for the extension by a six-to-one margin. The democrats were two-to-one against the extension. If the masses hadn't been deceived into giving the GOP control of the House, the Patriot Act would have expired this morning.
Thanks, assholes.
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That's sort of the thing, technically it didn't matter how the Democrats voted the first time as there were enough Republican votes to pass it considering that the President wasn't going to veto the bill. However, considering how few Democrats voted against it, I do think they deserve to be smacked upside the head for not at least symbolically voting against it.
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And the President is not a Democrat? The President could have vetoed the law yes? He could have let it sit around and not extend the PATRIOT act correct? What did our Democratic President do -- he went to great lengths to make sure it was signed.
If you think it makes a difference whether we have Democrats or Republicans in WA DC, you are deluded. Together they form a monoparty hell bent on shredding every word in the Constitution as we hurtle toward an Imperial Presidency.
Bush, Obama -- no difference ex
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The 'whiny republican' (the one questioning the constitutionality of the autopen) in question voted against the bill.
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The question was put to Republicans, not to Congressmen. There is some overlap, but less than there ought to be, and it isn't the public that should conform.
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--
Your brain is not a computer [goo.gl].
Here's a dictionary definition of 'computer':
com.put.er
-noun
1.
Also called processor. an electronic device designed to accept data, perform prescribed mathematical and logical operations at high speed, and display the results of these operations.
None of the points on the scienceblogs.com page you link to stop the brain from falling into this category. Things like 'the brain is analog, not digital' - so what? A computer doesn't have to be digital. 'The brain has a body' - which it receives inputs from and sends outputs to. Still a computer.
I guess it depends on your definition of 'computer', but they seem to be defining it as 'personal computer whose processor is made by Intel or AMD.'
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The Republican who raised the question voted against it. The other Republicans can go defile themselves thoroughly for all I care.
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Tell that to your party, then. Clearly they don't represent you.
A fair chunk of Dems voted yes, too... and our Dem president signed it remotely immediately after passing the house, remember? [opencongress.org]
Just because Republicans are the ones that introduced the PATRIOT Act doesn't mean that your beloved Democratic party opposes it.
Re:The comments are full of hilarity (Score:5, Informative)
House Dems votes against by more than a 2-1 margin. If Republicans didn't control the House, the Patriot Act would have expired this morning.
Source: http://politics.nytimes.com/congress/votes/112/house/1/376 [nytimes.com]
Re:The comments are full of hilarity (Score:5, Insightful)
Why such a discrepancy between House and Senate for Dems? Most Dem Senators voted yea...
Anyway, you can't assume that Dems in the House would have still voted the same way if they were the majority. US politics being what it is, minority parties tend to vote against things out of spite, but flip flop on the issue as soon as they're running things and could use some extra levers.
President Obama (Score:3, Insightful)
Look, I'm not into the whole "political" thing.
But it isn't "Mr." Obama; it's Mr. President or President Obama.
You could also use The President or POTUS.
Saying "Mr." Obama isn't just disrespecting him, it's disrespecting The Office of the President. It's tacky.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Which is why it's "Mr. President" rather than "His Elected Highness" or similar
A rose by any other name ... (Score:2)
Language is very maleable.
For instance, choosing to be called "Dear Leader" can be sold as an act of self-abasement.
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It's not that malleable. This isn't like Bush who failed to get elected in the standard fashion his first term. President Obama did manage to win the electoral votes necessary to be elected President without having the SCOTUS have to rewrite the constitution.
Referring to him as Mr. is an insult to him and probably motivated on some level by racism.
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> Referring to him as Mr. is an insult to him and probably motivated on some level by racism.
You'd better inform The Economist of that fact, then. Everyone, regardless of class or creed, is referred to as <prefix>.<surname> in that rather respected organ.
You can start with this article about Mr Reagan [economist.com].
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Malleable. Ask the linguists and the mathematicians.
Stepping back from theory, however, in the case of "Mister", just as sure as there are groups for which it has racist connotations and other groups for which it invokes master/disciple relations or the like, there are also groups for him it is an assertion of a default assumption of respect, and yet other groups for him it is a reserved title of respect.
Where "Mister" ranks relative to the title of "president" is yet another thing which varies from hood to
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The whole point of a president is to be the leader of the armed forces -- all the other law making bullshit is just grandstanding. He can suggest, and sometimes appoint friends, and wish, and but the president can not make laws or actually "change" much. Mostly the president goes along with whatever are the plans of the established system (note: not party-- those too are distractions).
Have you learned nothing from the scholars this recently passed Towel Day? The true purpose of the presidency is to di
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Yea I don't know where that started, but it was not just Obama. Some time in the middle of the last Bush administration all news articles, from all political persuasions, started saying "Mr Bush" (and then "Mr Obama"). What happened to "President Bush" and "President Obama"?
In fact it would help if they did this for historical reasons. Most presidents get in the news when they are not president, and future readers of news articles could tell immediately if the action/statement/whatever was from the person w
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Look, I'm not into the whole "political" thing.
But it isn't "Mr." Obama; it's Mr. President or President Obama.
You could also use The President or POTUS.
Saying "Mr." Obama isn't just disrespecting him, it's disrespecting The Office of the President. It's tacky.
I believe the accepted journalistic standard is "President Obama" on the first mention in an article, but "Mr. Obama" in the rest of the article. But there's no hard-and-fast rule - just "Mr. Obama" is itself an indicator of respect (at least more so than just referring to him as "Obama").
Also consider that this is the United States - disrespecting our elected officials is part of that whole "freedom of speech" concept...
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Which means that we don't throw people in prison for insulting the President. Which is probably a good thing otherwise most of the citizens would be in prison. It doesn't mean that it's acceptable behavior or respectful to address him as such.
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George Washington is rolling in his grave over how much of a pretentious jackass you, and the others you're parroting, are.
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In defense, the office of POTUS hasn't been all that respectable in the 3 decades I have personally witnessed, either.
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As long as we're talking about official etiquette, one does not retain the honorary use of the title "President" after leaving office. Clinton and GWBush are IIRC both officially styled "Governor", since most s
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It's hardly just Clinton and Bush that have retained the honorific, in recent decades that's become the style for all Presidents living or deceased.
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This is America. I can call him what I damn well please.
You think being tacky is a deterrent to Americans? You ever been to a theme park?
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George Washington is rolling in his grave over how much of a jackass you are.
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Before El Presidente Obama, it was perfectly acceptable to call his predecessor "Bushtard".
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Outside America, his formal title would be His Excellency Mr Barrack Obama, President of the United States of America, shortening it to Mr Obama is quite common and standard given he makes no claim to royalty, is not a woman, did not hold a medical or doctoral degree and did not serve in the arm forces at a rank O-6 or above.
Americans however have the right to disrespect any political office they feel like, it's surely more productive to discuss the political structure and office than to simply spread sland
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It's only natural, the more people feel disenfranchised and the more they feel that government is done to them rather than for them, the less respect will be shown for any of it's trappings.
People are catching on that it isn't just this guy or that guy that screws us, but anyone at all who occupies that office.
Let a president act respectably and people will have respect.
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Honestly, I find PoTUS (really, the 'of" should be lower case)
But not "the"?
Bravo Rand Paul. (Score:5, Interesting)
"Congress bumped up against the deadline mainly because of the stubborn resistance from a single senator, Republican freshman Rand Paul of Kentucky, who saw the terrorist-hunting powers as an abuse of privacy rights. Paul held up the final vote for several days while he demanded a chance to change the bill to diminish the government's ability to monitor individual actions. The bill passed the Senate 72-23."
- from http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/05/26/politics/main20066686.shtml [cbsnews.com]
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I will admit, in all the posts about "Rand Paul" I thought they were talking about "Ron Paul" and being "4chan-clever," like Xbox fanboys calling Nintendo's offering the "GayCube"...
Autopen (Score:2)
NPR did a nice little story about this today. Talks about what the Constitution says vs what it means. http://www.npr.org/2011/05/27/136717719/obama-wields-his-autopen [npr.org]
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There is also another article [cbsnews.com] at the linked site which I found informative.
It's a stupid question (Score:2)
The Bush administration Justice Dept reviewed this, and while ultimately Bush decided to manually sign whatever bill they were discussing, the JP had produced a 20+ page justification that it WAS perfectly fine - the point was that the president had DECIDED to authorize the bill, not mechanically how he signed it. For example, the Constitution states that if he isn't going to sign it, he must return it - and nobody expects him to act like a process server, trying to 'catch' a congressman to literally retur
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the point was that the president had DECIDED to authorize the bill
What was it that he decided to authorize? I suppose he may have a general idea, but I doubt he knows specifically if he's having to sign it remotely. (Is the autopen robot reading the bill for him as well?)
Is he limited to authorizing the signature on specific bills, or can he delegate it so "anything the Democratic leadership is ok with I authorize to be signed," etc.?
Also, if your argument is that it is merely the authorization that is important, I don't see why the autopen would be used in the first pl
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The irony... (Score:2)
Questioning the constitutionality of the way a bill gets signed that by itself is about as unconstitutional as a bill can get...
We've got to pass this bill (Score:4, Funny)
... so the president can find out what's in it!
"They let me sign checks with a rubber stamp!" -H. Simpson.
Was GWB too busy clearing brush? (Score:2)
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How did this Rep. Graves vote on the act? (I know it says "R" but might as well ask for the sake of thoroughness). If it was a "Nay" then it might be getting "dug out now" as a last-ditch effort to DTRT.
Re:What? (Score:5, Informative)
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He's one of only 31 Republicans to have voted against it. And since this is his first term in federal government, he has never voted on it in the past. So I guess he deserves credit for the vote. Of course, he also voted to end Medicare, prevent the FCC from enforcing Net Neutrality, shut down Planned Parenthood, and keep troops in Afghanistan for longer.
So fuck him.
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Yup, cause all libertarians love infinite war and the government having final say over women's bodies.
When did the fascists in the country start calling themselves libertarians?
FYI, a real libertarian is someone like Rand Paul, whose voting record is markedly different.
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What does preventing one's taxes from being spent on something they disagree with have to do with having final say over women's bodies? Go spend your own money on whatever you want to.
BTW, I am for at least many of the programs/practices of Planned Parenthood, but think it (and tons of other programs) shouldn't be paid for with my taxes. (Including lots of subsidies for things I agree with, such as solar panels... But just like Ron Paul takes the tax writ
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He's one guy. You think everyone here has the same opinions?
There are conservatives here, as evidenced by all the Republican Kool-Aid you've been drinking. He's just not one of them.
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Or a victim of the propaganda of the big telcos and the general corporate propaganda that government is ALWAYS worse than private enterprise.
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The Autopen -- or things like it -- have been around a LONG time. They look kind of funky and almost rube-goldbergish in design. It basically allows one to "write" once, but what one writes will appear on several copies via levers and pivots.
Several past presidents have used them, but I believe this is the first time it was ever used to sign a bill in to law -- and I haven't seen what Mr. Obama used yet. Still, I really cant find any question if it's unconstitutional to sign this way.
Re:What? (Score:4, Informative)
Unless the constitution outright states that the President must sign with pen-and-ink in person, I think there's enough precedent for many levels of government, foreign governments and extranational institutions accepting autopen signatures to render the constitutionality of the question moot.
This is what Article I Section 2 says:
All it says is that the President has to sign the bill for it to become law (except where Congress gets the 2/3s to override a Presidential veto). Since autopens have for a long time been seen as legitimate signatures, I doubt very much that there is any question as to the constitutionality of this particular signature.
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All it says is that the President has to sign the bill for it to become law (except where Congress gets the 2/3s to override a Presidential veto). Since autopens have for a long time been seen as legitimate signatures, I doubt very much that there is any question as to the constitutionality of this particular signature.
But why use the Autopen. US Law allows all kinds of documents to be signed via a digital signature, which doesn't require the signer to be in any particular place. And this type of signature has already been used to sign a bill into law - Bill Clinton signed the Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act using a digital signature.
So why didn't President Obama follow this precedent, signing via digital signature?
The President should be required to digitally sign the text of the bill, and th
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Not necessarily. The provisions would have expired before then, raising the issue of the legality of an extension that goes into effect after a provision has lapsed. The bill cannot be effective before it is signed (no post facto laws), and depending on the language of the bill it could (arguably) have been rendered null and void.
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I want the digital signature to be embedded into the autopen signature so that the autopen signature can be digitally verified.
I just made that up, but could they do that?
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Not that I like the PATRIOT Act or particularly care about the autopen, but if we're going strictly by the Constitution then it is actually pretty clear that he did NOT sign the bill. He never even saw the bill (the actual bill; hopefully he has seen the text, but even that is up for debate). It was a machine that replicates his signature that signed it. He never signed it any more than a really good forgery would mean he signed i
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Maybe there should be an official presidential robot. The secret service could make a new one for each new president. The robot would be humanoid in appearance and could stand in for the president in situations where he might be in danger such as public appearances and sleeping with the first lady (the robot would of course be anatomically correct). The robot would be teleoperated from special rooms in airforce one and the whitehouse. This would enable the president to use telepresence to sign bills like th
An autopen plus a teleprompter (Score:3)
And we don't need the real Obama at all.
Re:What? (Score:5, Funny)
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What the hell is this autopen machine? Wouldn't this amount to some sort of forgery, at the very least?
Just think. President Kennedy could have signed it.
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"there is no constitutional definition of signed..."
Nor is there any need for one. The meaning of what was written was fully understood by contemporary society at the time, and it is no more ambiguous now than it was then.
Would you also insist that the Constitution explicitly define "state", and "people", and "is"? Of course not. That would be ridiculous, right?
I get so tired of people trying to "interpret" what the Constitution means, when its meaning is already quite well understood.
Re:a better solution (Score:4, Funny)
The device is called an "undergrad".
Re:So what (Score:5, Informative)
Because you can't extend a law which has expired. The provisions would have expired at midnight this morning, before the bill could have become law by default. This would have (arguably) rendered the extension null and void.
Re:What a microcosm of what's wrong with us (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Does anyone read the constitution? (Score:4, Informative)
So worst case here, the PATRIOT Act renewal didn't take effect but will soon.
A bill that extends a law doesn't copy the law into a new law, it merely amends the expiration date that is written in the existing law. You can't amend a law that has expired, and a bill that is implicitly signed due to sitting for 10 days is not retroactive to when it was forwarded to the President, so it would have effectively become useless had it not been signed last night.
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Maybe he just didn't want his picture taken while signing this bill.
Can you blame him? Shit like this makes me think that we're losing the so-called war on terror
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Actually, the only point to a signature is to offer a degree of nonrepudiation. It doesn't matter what it is, really, or how it came to be as long as it provides some assurance of an agreement. (In this case, the assurance that the President did intend to approve the law.) If it's reasonably difficult to forge, that's great, that makes it a better signature. But most real signatures are easy to forge as an autopen signature. Lots of signatures these days are digital -- and not the cryptographic kind, but th
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Yes, but the USAPATRIOT act would already have expired before those 10 days were up, and they can't extend an expired act. They'd have to run through the process of passing the law over again.
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With that said, I'm really disappointed that this bill went through.