If you're not a fan of the Patriot Act, you may not acknowledge the actuality that it was continued for four added years by a machine. President Obama acclimated an autopen to renew the arguable legislation on Thursday, adopting some eyebrows with the automated surrogate.
Obama was in France back he accustomed the signing aloof afore a midnight cessation deadline. It followed a House vote of 250-153.
First developed 200 years ago by British artist John Isaac Hawkins, autopens are machines that trace engraved signatures and are generally acclimated to assurance cards and belletrist beatific by the White House. But aftermost week's signature seems to be the aboriginal use of the accessory to assurance article into law.
The accommodation to use the autopen was allegedly based on a 2005 Justice Department announcement that assured "the admiral charge not alone accomplish the concrete act of accession his signature to a bill to assurance it."
Some are apperception that application an autopen could atom challenges beneath Article I, Section 7 of the Constitution, which states: "Every Bill which shall accept anesthetized the House of Representatives and the Senate, shall, afore it become a Law, be presented to the Admiral of the United States; If he accept he shall assurance it..."
Rep. Tom Graves (R-Ga.) has questioned whether Obama was presented with the legislation afore he had the apparatus assurance it and whether the signing was constitutional. He asked for a "detailed, accounting explanation" of the angary of application an autopen.
"Consider the alarming antecedent this sets," Graves said in a statement. "Any cardinal of affairs could appear in the approaching area the accessible could catechism whether or not the admiral accustomed the use of an autopen."
Thomas Jefferson was a big fan of autopens. He acclimated Hawkins' letter-copying "polygraph" so generally that he accepted he couldn't alive after it.
I admiration what he would accept anticipation of this kerfuffle.
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