Alito and the Presidential Signing Statement,

Sent this email to some Congresspeople through Working Assets:

The "Presidential Signing Statement", which Alito apparently recommended, Reagan first seized upon, and Bush uses with some abandon, is an indication of where Alito's nomination is coming from and how he will behave if allowed to sit on the Supreme Court. The Executive is not supposed to replace the Legislature anymore than the Judiciary is, yet this is what Bush tries to do with these statements: sign into law a modified version of Congress' intent. These statements should have no binding authority; they have perhaps been tolerated because they were just a footnote, an expression of Presidential vanity of little consequence. Bush doesn't operate that way; he tries to monopolize power to the greatest degree possible. And Alito will back him up on this when Bush actually tries to hide behind his own interpretations, in the form of signing statements, of legislation that would otherwise curb his authority, like the ban on torture.

Please support John Kerry's filibuster of this nomination. When you put the nomination together with things like outsourced, fraudulent elections and going to war on false pretexts that lead to the multi-billion dollar profit of crony corporations, it is clearly a step on the road away from democracy and towards dictatorship. Extraordinary circumstances indeed.

Click here for an NPR broadcast on the subject. of Presidential signing statements. A somewhat more probing looking is provided in this article by John Dean. My suspicion is that the signing statement is extra-constitutional, and that it's legal effect should be nil, if challenged in a responsible Supreme Court. But an irresponsible Supreme Court could allow the President to usurp legislative responsibilities, essentially giving him a line item veto, which already has been ruled unconstitutional: the President may sign or reject the bill given to him, not write his own version of it, as far as I can tell so far. However, I have believed all along that it is Bush' desire to erode the separation of powers. One way to do that is to place his "yes" men (and women) on the Supreme Court. Another is to get those members of the Supreme Court to vote him legislative powers, gradually moving the Presidency toward the vision of a "Unitary President", who ultimately becomes, to quote one word from a supposed wisecrack of Bush's, a "dictator". So, if the so-called "signing statement" is ever challenged, Alito may be just the person that Bush needs to tip the court to grant it the power to override Congressional authority.