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Perhaps you've heard by now that President Obama signed an extension of the Patriot Act into law by using autopen, which is basically a mechanical way of signing his name when he is not physically able to sign the actual bill. A legal opinion was issued in 2005 under Bush which argued that this was constitutional, but Bush apparently never used autopen in this manner, accodging to this article. If a machine can sign for the President, could Sasha, too?What might be wrong with this use of technology?
Congressman Tom Graves, R-Ga., worries what might happen if the president is hospitalized or otherwise in a state of diminished capacity."...Can a group of aggressive Cabinet members interpret a wink or a squeeze of the hand as approval of an autopen signing?" says Graves. "I am very concerned about what this means for future presidential orders, whether they be signing bills into law, military orders, or executive orders."
I think that is a very valid concern, and this all could probably lead to some sort of challenge at the U.S. Supreme Court level. It's unclear to me whether autopen is simply like some sort of "stamp" that is used in place of the president's actual signature, or if it actually makes use of some robotic pen to draw the lines of the signature. If it is just a stamp, then the technology would have been around during the time of the Constitutional Convention, meaning that our Founding Fathers could have included such a provision in the Constitution, but chose not to. This would strengthen the argument that use of autopen is unconstitutional.
I think the use of the autopen is unconstitutional. I also think liberals will say that it is cool because anything Obama does is automatically OK. They will also claim that since the constitution is a “living document” this is one of those circumstances the founders could not have foreseen and thus does not fall under the constitution anyway.Lastly, it is not like the current trip was a secret so what did the Democrat Senate and Republican House think they were doing when they passed this bill? I would think it is safe to assume that they know about the statutory limitations that apply when they pass articles of legislation.
