I know everyone’s focused on who’s going to be the next president of the country, but it’s worth noting that we still have that one from the 2000 presidential election right now. Remember him? He’s the guy Oliver Stone made a movie about, if that jogs your memory.

Anyway, what has the man who liberals love to hate and conservatives love to quietly disassociate themselves from been up to recently?

The latest is the leaking of a memo from his first term, in which the Bush Administration endorsed, among other “[insert obtuse bureaucrat-speak euphemism for excruciating torture],” waterboarding. Which shouldn’t be a huge surprise to anyone who has been paying attention, but now there’s actual proof. Shocking! I wonder if either presidential candidate will make an issue of it, or if it will be mentioned at the debate?

Okay, I’m not actually wondering that. It won’t be.

“But wait,” you’re probably asking, “putting aside, for a moment, the Geneva Convention, the Bill of Rights and basic human decency, didn’t Congress pass legislation banning torture?”

Why yes, yes they did. In 2005. And President Bush promptly singing statemented it into oblivion. A signing statement, for those not in the know, is where the president, upon signing a bill, announces how the executive branch will interpret it. Our current president takes this to mean that he can “interpret” a bill as not applying to him.

Which brings us to the other thing Bush has been up to lately: the little scamp just signed two pieces of legislation and then asserted the right to ignore those parts of the bills that he didn’t like.

And while his predecessors have used signing statements for various reasons, Bush is in a league of his own — this president has used signing statements to “assert a right to bypass more than 1,100 sections of laws.” That’s nearly double the combined total of every other president in American history.

Hahahah! You little prankster, you.