Political Skullduggery

When President Bush signed the McCain anti-torture law last month he slipped a weasel-ly "signing statement" into the proceedings.

Supreme Court nominee Samuel A. Alito Jr. is a big fan of interpreting such "signing statements" as limiting the scope of law.

One Senator called Alito on the carpet over the issue:

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) argued that President Bush essentially wrote in a signing statement late last month that he could circumvent the law because of his authority to supervise "the unitary executive branch," potentially opening the door for him to allow torture. Kennedy accused Alito of supporting such signing statements "to limit the scope of laws passed by Congress," and he pointed to language the judge used when advising President Ronald Reagan.

"You've suggested that the court should give a president's signing statement great deference in determining the meaning and the intent of the law and argued, as a matter of your own political and judicial philosophy, for an almost all-powerful presidency," Kennedy said. "Time and again, even in routine matters involving average Americans, you give enormous, almost total deference to the exercise of governmental power."

The entire idea of slipping a "signing statement" into presidential approvals of lawmakers' work is something that only a slippery character could see as valid.

The Washington Post apparently agrees, and today has an editorial on it's use by Bush the slitherer on McCain's amendment.

The president made his intentions clear in signing the defense bill containing the McCain amendment last month. Mr. Bush issued a presidential signing statement saying his administration would interpret the new law "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." The language refers to the assertion by the president's lawyers that his powers allow him, in wartime, to ignore statutes passed by Congress. The White House has intimated that it has similar authority in justifying Mr. Bush's authorization of surveillance of Americans without court approval, in violation of another law. The signing statement also advanced the administration's view that the McCain amendment does not provide for any court review of a prisoner's claim of cruel treatment, and that all appeals by foreign prisoners before the courts should be dismissed.

It hopefully bodes well that the Post is becoming confident enough to challenge Bush's odious unilateral assumption of extra-legal powers.