Long time no post . . . as usual?

Yes, I have been getting a lot of guff from my friends and family about not posting enough lately so I figure I might as well. As you all probably all already know, I didn't make it into the foreign service; I made a 4.0 out of 7.0, and the minimum score was 5.25. What does all that mean? No idea actually, they wouldn't let me ask questions about how I did. The next chance I'll get to be interviewed would be September 2007, and while I'll definitely try again, I'm not betting 14 months of my life on the chance that I'll make it in next time. So what do I do? I'm looking at a doctoral programs. I can make it into FSU History department relatively easily, in fact the person who would let me in is already on my thesis committee. What's more is that I could even keep my job . . . what can I say, I like to pay the bills. I've also begun to look at other universities, and the one that I like the most so far is Cambridge . . . not only because it's in England, but it's also relatively cheap considering it's in the top 5 world universities, it has a good Asian History department, and there are even a few National Fellowships set up just for Americans who want to go to Cambridge. Special thanks to Billy G by the way.

Not that I want to turn this into a political blog, but there are a few things that I would like to get off my chest. But before I start, let me plug two really valuable internet resources which I use on close to a daily basis "Google News" and "Bug Me Not". Google News of course lets you search throughout breaking news and links you to the most relevant and latest articles, while Bug Me Not gives you passwords to the online newspaper sites so you don't have to sign up for them and get all that fun spam. If you have any problems logging into any of my links, check Bug Me Not for a password. Anyway, back to the issue at hand.

Our political and legal system is based on a system of checks and balances, but recently I have become aware of a few movements that are aimed at eliminating many of these checks and balances and thus threaten our system of government. Because of limited time, I'll just write about the first of them today. Yesterday, I heard about something that I heard "Presidential Signing Statements" for the first time. Instead of vetoing a bill, which is of course a president's constitutional right, these signing statements instead challenge the constitutionality of the law . . . thus refusing to implement the law. The problem? Vetoes are overridable, but these are not . . . because they are not in the constitution. Hurrah for checks and balances. Check out one the signing statements yourself here; though you'll notice they're often hard to read, you might want to look in the library of congress here as well to see what they are talking about in the laws. If all of that is too much work, you might want to check out the article that made me aware of the situation here . . . or check out the author's examples of signing statements here. A critic of the first article (here) notes that Bush is not the first president to use signing statements, Regan was . . . and Regan, H.W. Bush, and Clinton all used them. But as both articles show, our current president has written more of these signing statements then the other three presidents combined (check out a graph here). What's more is something that neither article mentions that our current president has used these signing statements lieu of vetoes. Bush remains the first two term president never to veto a law since John Q. Adams. Whether you're Republican, Democrat or independent like myself, no one should be happy about this subversion of constitution.

Peace out, and word to your respective mothers.

-Mr. Bento