John Hancock of Massachusetts is famous for his larger-than-life signature on the U.S. Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. Indeed, in America the words “John Hancock” are generally acknowledged as a synonym for the word “signature.” Hancock is said to have proudly commented on his large-sized signature by exclaiming, “There! I guess King George will be able to read that!”
The June 4, 2013 edition of The Washington Times features an article on the Opinion Page in the Comment and Analysis section with a title of “Rubber-Stamp Government” carrying the subtitle “Disavowal of a Signature is Dodging Accountability.”
The article mentioned above states that the current three major scandals facing the Obama White House all share a common theme in that government officials put their signatures on a certain document, and then disavowed accountability. In the first example, Chief Counsel of the American Center for Law and Justice Jay Sekulow has collected 15 letters bearing the signature of IRS official Lois Lerner (who claims that she has done nothing wrong in the IRS’s harassment of conservative organizations which applied for tax-exempt status). The article poses that Ms. Lerner deserves the same treatment as any taxpayer who may sign a tax return containing an honest mistake and is not permitted to disavow any responsibility for it.
The article’s second example describes Attorney General Eric Holder, Jr. signing off on a request for a warrant to secretly nab personal emails by Fox News reporter James Rosen, although Holder said that the use of the Espionage Act in the prosecution of journalists is not something that he would ever have been involved with.
And now for our third example we come to Benghazi. Our former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has denied that she knew of any requests for additional protection during the terrorist attack at the U.S. Consulate in Libya, although we now know that an April report from congressional Republicans “concluded that a diplomatic cable from the State Department to the Tripoli embassy bearing Mrs. Clinton’s signature acknowledged a request for additional security, but instead articulates a plan to scale back security assets for the U.S. Mission in Libya, including the Benghazi Mission.”
The Times article sums up by saying that a person’s signature once meant putting one’s good name on the line; government bureaucrats should be required “to accept personal responsibility for their signatures”.
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