Yesterday, with just 98 days left in his presidency, President Bush issued more signing statements, signifying that he’s going to ignore parts of laws that he himself had signed.

President Bush asserted on Tuesday that he had the executive power to bypass several parts of two bills: a military authorization act and a measure giving inspectors general greater independence from White House control.

Mr. Bush signed the two measures into law. But he then issued a so-called signing statement in which he instructed the executive branch to view parts of each as unconstitutional constraints on presidential power. …

Mr. Bush has used the signing statements to assert a right to bypass more than 1,100 sections of laws. By comparison, all previous presidents combined challenged about 600 sections of bills.

I hate this shit. It’s blatantly unconstitutional. If you don’t like a bill or think it encroaches upon executive powers, you veto it. You don’t go around the veto by issuing signing statements. It denies Congress the chance to override a veto. Even if there’s practically no chance of an override, it still violates the Constitution.

The American Bar Association agrees.

The “No on Prop 8” people in California (those are the good guys) have created four commercials that spoof the Mac-vs-PC ads. The woman playing the California constitution in #3 totally reminds me of Christina Hendricks, who plays the awesome Joan Holloway on Mad Men. I seriously thought it was her at first.

I don’t know what it is about this recent sketch from Saturday Night Live, but I smile every time I watch it. It’s so stupid it’s funny.

Matthew Shepard died 10 years ago today.

I had only been out of the closet for a couple of months when he died, and his death affected me deeply. Here’s what I wrote at the time for a UVa student newspaper, The Declaration.

There were 600 days until the end of the Bush presidency, then 500 days, then 400, then 300, then 200.

Finally, as of today, there are only 100 days until Bush leaves office! Only 2400 hours or so to go.

They can’t pass soon enough.

While breaking the Yom Kippur fast last night with some dear, lifelong family friends, I learned the following:

Back in the 70s, in Ann Arbor, Michigan, William Ayers had a thing for my brother’s best friend’s mom. She kept having to turn down his advances.

To think that if things had gone differently, my brother’s best friend and his sister could have been the children of Bill Ayers.

Last night’s townhall debate made me think back to the townhall debate of 1992, which was held in Richmond, Virginia. Sixteen years ago — sixteen years ago! — I was in my second year at the University of Virginia, and I tagged along with some of the University Democrats to Richmond, an hour away, to attend an official Democratic debate-watching party in a crowded hotel ballroom. We watched it on a big screen, cheering Clinton, booing Bush, laughing when debate moderater Carole Simpson just barely hid her sarcasm by referring to Bush as “the education president.”

After the debate, the Clintons and their entourage came over to the hotel. I managed to push my way into the throng of people behind the rope line and shake Clinton’s hand. (I was too short to actually see him, but I stuck my hand in between some people and my hand was shaken.) Bill and Hillary got up onto the podium, Virginia Governor Doug Wilder introduced them. Bill said very little — he was completely hoarse — so Hillary spoke on his behalf.

That debate was a turning point in the 1992 election. Here’s the clip of the most famous moment from that debate.

Only three U.S. presidents so far have had names ending in vowel sounds: James Monroe, William McKinley, and John F. Kennedy.

(Most popular final letter: N. Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Jackson, Van Buren, Harrison, Buchanan, Lincoln, Johnson, Harrison, Wilson, Truman, Johnson, Nixon, Reagan, Clinton.)

Latin is making a comeback in American schools.

The number of students in the United States taking the National Latin Exam has risen steadily to more than 134,000 students in each of the past two years, from 124,000 in 2003 and 101,000 in 1998…

Marty Abbott, education director of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages, said it was possible that Latin would edge out German as the third most popular language taught in schools, behind Spanish and French, when the preliminary results of an enrollment survey are released next year. In the last survey, covering enrollment in 2000, Latin placed fourth.

I’ve been teaching myself Latin for the last couple of months. I’d always wanted to learn it and I’m enjoying doing so.

Ms. Abbott, a former Latin teacher, said that today’s Latin classes appeal to more students because they have evolved from “dry grammar and tortuous translations” to livelier lessons that focus on culture, history and the daily life of the Romans.

I actually love grammar, which is probably why I find Latin fun. Since I’m not in a classroom setting, I don’t know if I’d be able to hold conversations in it. But maybe the reading and writing is more important anyway.

Sarah Palin Debate Flowchart. Love it.

Two great articles about Sarah Palin in Slate.

This one explains Sarah Palin’s accent, and Alaskan accents in general:

Overall, because of the mixture of people and the large number of newcomers, Alaskan English is often hard to place, with both Westerners and Midwesterners thinking that it sounds oddly foreign; indeed, some Westerners have said that Palin sounds like a Midwesterner, and Midwesterners that she sounds Western.

And this one attempts to diagram Palin’s sentences.

I had to give up. This sentence is not for diagramming lightweights. If there’s anyone out there who can kick this sucker into line, I’d be delighted to hear from you. To me, it’s not English—it’s a collection of words strung together to elicit a reaction, floating ands and prepositional phrases (“with that vote of the American people”) be damned. It requires not a diagram but a selection of push-buttons.

On Thursday night we’ll get to see Joe Biden and Sarah Palin debate each other.

This reminds me that one of my favorite national debates ever was the VP debate in 1992.

It was a clash between two iconic politicians: the up-and-coming Al Gore and the embarrassing incumbent VP, Dan Quayle. How could you not watch? Quayle was scrappy and aggressive, tearing into Bill Clinton at every opportunity, while Gore was relentlessly on message, barely concealing his contempt for his former congressional colleague. In the middle was James Stockdale, Ross Perot’s bizarre running mate, interrupting the brawl with odd moments of unintentional humor.

As Maureen Dowd wrote, “With an evidently overcaffeinated Mr. Quayle bouncing from rant to rant to his right and with Mr. Gore relentlessly reeling off speech-chunks to his left, Mr. Stockdale appeared in something of the role of a bewildered grandfather who has wandered down to the rec room in search of his slippers to find himself in the middle of an impassioned teen-age debate on the merits of Ice-T.”

Elizabeth Kolbert: “[F]or those who like to watch politics in its purest form — as a kind of psychological gang warfare — the Vice Presidential debate was one of the best shows the campaign has offered so far.”

Here are the opening statements of all three candidates:

Here’s one of my favorite moments, because it illustrates the tenor of the whole evening:

Here’s the moment where Stockdale says his hearing aid wasn’t turned on:

And here’s another short clip: “pull a Bill Clinton”:

The candidates celebrate Rosh Hashannah.

Sarah Palin: “As Putin rears his head and comes into the airspace of the United States of America, where do they go? It’s Alaska.”

In response, there’s this.

And that’s why I love the Internet.

Still alive… I’ve got a bad cold, though. I’m back at work today after two days of staying home. I watched a couple of movies, I watched the episode of Beverly Hills, 90210 where the gang meets Color Me Badd.

It seemed as dated as when Marcia Brady met Davy Jones.

Has it really been 16 years since 1992? Where has the time gone?