Do the world top personalities do thier own signatures in hand on every document? Did you ever receive an autograph of a celebrity by post?
Well it seems that, one can put his signature onto a document, even if he is miles away from it.
Apparantly thats what President Obama did.
Well, President Barack Obama has been in Europe for the annual G-8 summit and Congress was racing to pass legislation extending the authorization of key surveillance methods used to try to thwart attacks on the United States, which were due to expire Thursday night at midnight. Congress came through just hours before midnight but Obama was in France.
According to a White House spokesperson, Obama used a device called an autopen, which mechanically reproduces a human signature.
That prompted at least one lawmaker, Georgia Republican Representative Tom Graves, to question whether that was legal or not, writing Obama a letter seeking clarification.
“I thought it was a joke at first, but the President did, in fact, authorize an autopen to sign the Patriot Act extension into law. Consider the dangerous precedent this sets. Any number of circumstances could arise in the future where the public could question whether or not the president authorized the use of an autopen,” Graves said in a statement.
Well, for those who may question the use of the auto-pen, there is a legal opinion issued during the Bush administration that gave the green-light to using it.
“We conclude that the President need not personally perform the physical act of affixing his signature to a bill to sign it within the meaning of Article I, Section 7″ of the U.S. Constitution, the 29-page opinion said.
“We emphasize that we are not suggesting that the President may delegate the decision to approve and sign a bill, only that, having made this decision, he may direct a subordinate to affix the President’s signature to the bill,” it said.
