Ok, I posted on this subject yesterday - and I'm at it again. Perhaps this is Adrian Monk-style OCD (Monk is one of my favorite shows), but in truth I think otherwise. It's imperative that we keep this issue front and center; it's not simply over because Alito has been confirmed.... Our very democracy is at stake.
In my latest reference, I point you to a column by John Dean a little while back. [I apologize if it's already been posted]... Dean summarizes it nicely for us:
Rather than veto laws passed by Congress, Bush is using his signing statements to effectively nullify them as they relate to the executive branch. These statements, for him, function as directives to executive branch departments and agencies as to how they are to implement the relevant law.
Dean also offers a not so hypothetical situation that is right on the money:
Suppose a new law requires the President to act in a certain manner - for instance, to report to Congress on how he is dealing with terrorism. Bush's signing statement will flat out reject the law, and state that he will construe the law "in a manner consistent with the President's constitutional authority to withhold information the disclosure of which could impair foreign relations, the national security, the deliberative processes of the Executive, or the performance of the Executive's constitutional duties."
The upshot? It is as if no law had been passed on the matter at all.
As Dean points out, the Supreme Court has already ruled that line-item vetoes are unconstitutional, but in essence Bush is using presidential signings to circumvent that holding. He's using them to give the Executive unilateral authority to exclude at an arbitrary whim a line item in ANY law.
Bush is using signing statements like line item vetoes. Yet the Supreme Court has held the line item vetoes are unconstitutional. In 1988, in Clinton v. New York, the High Court said a president had to veto an entire law: Even Congress, with its Line Item Veto Act, could not permit him to veto provisions he might not like.
The Court held the Line Item Veto Act unconstitutional in that it violated the Constitution's Presentment Clause. That Clause says that after a bill has passed both Houses, but "before it become[s] a Law," it must be presented to the President, who "shall sign it" if he approves it, but "return it" - that is, veto the bill, in its entirety-- if he does not.
Following the Court's logic, and the spirit of the Presentment Clause, a president who finds part of a bill unconstitutional, ought to veto the entire bill -- not sign it with reservations in a way that attempts to effectively veto part (and only part) of the bill. Yet that is exactly what Bush is doing. The Presentment Clause makes clear that the veto power is to be used with respect to a bill in its entirety, not in part.
Dean's analysis is a strong defense of Congress in the face of Executive over-reach, but from what I'm seeing, Bush is taking it even further, extending his unitary authority in a way that also vetoes COURT decisions. How else should we read the signing statement that accompanied the anti-torture bill?
The executive branch shall construe Title X in Division A of the Act, relating to detainees, in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the President to supervise the unitary executive branch and as Commander in Chief and consistent with the constitutional limitations on the judicial power, which will assist in achieving the shared objective of the Congress and the President, evidenced in Title X, of protecting the American people from further terrorist attacks.
"...shall construe... in a matter...consistent with the constitutional limitations of the judicial power... "
Where in the constitution does it say the president gets to decide those limitations, whatever they may be?
There's a pretty straightforward reading to this:
the President will likely ignore any court order that finds a violation of the torture bill or FISA law. If and when this happens, tyranny in its worst form will have officially arrived in the United States.
THIS is the issue in '06... It should send chills across America, but for some reason that's not happening... However, if American Idol ever got bumped for news coverage of this issue, by God THEN you'd see outraged Americans...
God save us...