Armando challenges Alito's support for the President's penchant for interpreting the law

with today's wapo story on alito as a starting point, armando at kos highlights a very interesting point about supreme court nominee samuel alito and frames it in the larger context of bush's predeliction for usurping legislative power and/or twisting the law to his own ends...

The February 1986 memo where Samuel Alito suggested that the President adopt the practice of issuing "interpretative signing statements" became more than just a bizarre proposal when the Bush Administration's penchant for disregarding duly enacted federal law became brazen -- through Bush's illegal program of warrantless domestic surveillance.

In the memo, Alito proposed:

a case for having the president routinely issue statements about the meaning of statutes when he signs them into law.

Such "interpretive signing statements" would be a significant departure from run-of-the-mill bill signing pronouncements, which are "often little more than a press release," Alito wrote. The idea was to flag constitutional concerns and get courts to pay as much attention to the president's take on a law as to "legislative intent."

"Since the president's approval is just as important as that of the House or Senate, it seems to follow that the president's understanding of the bill should be just as important as that of Congress," Alito wrote. He later added that "by forcing some rethinking by courts, scholars, and litigants, it may help to curb some of the prevalent abuses of legislative history."

armando's response, in a word - baloney...

The AUMF [Authorization to Use Military Force] is now argued as the superseding Congressional action which authorizes Bush's illegal domestic surveillance program. OF course this too is preposterous.

But the most preposterous argument is that a President who bludgeoned a spineless Congress to do whatever he wanted can now argue that that very Congress did not give him what he needed therefore he had to break the law.

what this piece of background does make quite clear, however, is bush's REAL motivation behind alito's appointment... (hint: it ain't only to overturn roe v. wade...)

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