Good evening, Tim! > Lowell > > > In fact, a few of them even accuse the President of secretly > > telling Congresscritters to make sure the bill didn't reach his > > desk. > > > Had he done so, it would not have violated his promise to > > "sign the bill." And, so far as I know, he has not denied that > > he did so. > > This does not seem good to me.
I don't know why. > > After 8 years of parsing Clinton, "if it gets to my desk, > > I'll sign it" is a model of clear political speech. > > Clear? Hardly if it allows Bush to go against the bill. Remember, Bill Clinton was telling the truth when he said "I did not have sex with that woman, Miss Lewinsky." You see, he did not consider the things he did with her to be sex. We had 8 years of Bill Clinton saying stuff like that (regarding his scandals, his policies, his actions, his intentions, his ... you get the picture.) EVERY time Bill said something, you had to look at every word and ask if there was some meaning to the word that could give him an "out" of some sort or make it possible that the sentence meant something entirely different than most people would think. Compared to that, Bush's promise might not be the most straightforward of statements, but you don't have to "re-interpret" any words to say that he did not break his promise if he put some pressure on people to keep the bill off his desk so that he wouldn't have to completely fulfill his promise by signing it. > I do not know the full context but it sounds to me like > Bush was implying a neutral position on the bill, prior to > it getting to his desk. The context is this. In 1994, Congress passed and Bill Clinton signed the "Assault Weapons Ban" into law. In order to get it through Congress, a sunset clause was added. It would expire in ten years. So, unless another law was passed, on September 13, 2004 (the 10-year anniversary of Bill Clinton's signature), the law would cease to have any effect. In September, 2000, during the campaign, Bush was asked about this law and whether he supported renewing it. His reply was (this may not quite be a quote) "If it reaches my desk, I'll sign it." Personally, I think that everyone who was interested in the issue understood at the time that this was a classic fence-straddle. He wasn't committed to pushing it, but he wasn't going to publicly oppose it either. It was essentially saying "I don't care either way--go bug someone else about this issue. Lowell C. Savage It's the freedom, stupid! Gun control: tyrants' tool, fools' folly. _______________________________________________ Libnw mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] List info and subscriber options: http://immosys.com/mailman/listinfo/libnw Archives: http://immosys.com/mailman//pipermail/libnw
