Alito, Bush and the "Unitary Executive"

i keep pounding on this... i think the issue of unlimited presidential power presents the worst crisis ever faced by this country and makes samuel alito the most dangerous supreme court nominee in history...

The “unitary executive” applies . . . to the President’s authority to interpret laws as he sees fit, especially in areas of national security where right-wing lawyers argue that the commander-in-chief powers are “plenary,” which means “absolute, unqualified.”

So, when Alito assured the Senate Judiciary Committee that no one, not even the President, is “above the law,” that palliative answer had little meaning since under the “unitary” theory favored by Alito the President effectively is the law.

Since his days as a lawyer in Ronald Reagan’s White House, Alito has pushed this theory. At a Federalist Society symposium in 2001, Alito recalled that when he was in the Office of Legal Counsel in Ronald Reagan’s White House, “we were strong proponents of the theory of the unitary executive, that all federal executive power is vested by the Constitution in the President.”

In 1986, Alito advocated the use of “interpretive signing statements” by presidents to counter the judiciary’s traditional reliance on congressional intent in assessing the meaning of federal law.

Under Bush, “signing statements” have become commonplace and amount to his rejection of legal restrictions especially as they bear on presidential powers.

but robert parry adds an even more disturbing perspective which hadn't yet occurred to me...

Justice Alito, as a longtime advocate of the theory, would put the Court’s right-wing faction on the verge of having a majority committed to embracing this constitutional argument that would strip regulatory agencies, such as the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Communications Commission, of their independence.

[...]

The Supreme Court's embrace of the “unitary executive” would sound the death knell for independent regulatory agencies as they have existed since the Great Depression, when they were structured with shared control between the Congress and the President. Putting the agencies under the President’s thumb would tip the balance of Washington power to the White House and invite abuses by letting the Executive turn on and off enforcement investigations.

i hadn't yet connected the "unitary executive" issue with the oft-cited aim of the bush administration to roll back the new deal and return the u.s. to a state of unfettered executive and corporate power as it existed pre-depression... there are so many hidden agendas and covert tactics being employed by bushco, it's a full-time job just connecting the dots...

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