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Bush's Signing Statements: Fingerprint of Despotism The monotonous, pretending shtick that's become the Samuel Alito confirmation hearings has done little in discerning the character and ideological inclination of the president's nominee. Instead, it has unearthed a chilling practice of unbounded executive authority that has hitherto remained hidden in plain sight. The intense prodding into the details of Samuel Alito’s unsettling past has unintentionally elucidated some unsettling practices within the criminal halls of the Bush Administration as well. Coinciding with a Zogby Poll finding that more than half of Americans support the impeachment of the president over NSA wiretapping, it will take only the most skilled and deceptive government apologists to counter his indulgent use in presidential signing statements that has been brought to light. The idea of a presidential signing statement sounds innocuous enough. But then again, these are the same wriggling snakes that gave us the USA Patriot Act. In essence, “presidential signing statements” give the president authority to relegate legislation passed by Congress as purely advisory by nullifying provisions he disagrees with upon signing it into the law. The practice has been administered since the days of Andrew Jackson but has never been publicly challenged despite escalating use by recent presidential administrations. As John Dean, former Chief Minority Counsel to the Judiciary Committee of the House, points out: “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.” We find a recent example with the “McCain Torture Bill.” After proclaiming to the world that “this government does not torture,” Bush attached a signing statement to the McCain bill, rejecting it and relegating it into a position of presidential interpretation. We can only wonder how many pairs of pants his close advisor John Woo must have gone through after hearing that one. Bush’s intentionally nebulous, open-ended signing statements give the go-ahead for his cabal of torture warlocks to crush the testacles of small children with perfect impunity. Concerning the Sept. 11th attacks, Bush utilized a signing statement after Congress passed legislation requiring an independent commission to investigate the attacks. He issued a signing statement asserting that he would interpret the legislation “in a manner consistent with the president’s constitutional authority to withhold information.” Bush doesn’t deny using signing statements but doesn’t like to talk about them either. Phillip Cooper, a leading expert on signing statements, claims the Bush Administration has administered over 100 of them resulting in almost 600 constitutional challenges. It’s nothing short of mind-blowing that it takes a rigorous background check of a Supreme Court nominee to expose decades of unchecked, systematic presidential law-breaking. The entire practice is complete with Constitutional illegalities. Bush is using signing statements just like line item vetoes. In a 1988 statue, a High Court in the case of Clinton vs. New York decided that a president could not modify a bill to his liking by omitting particular provisions. The Court had decided that the line-item veto is unconstitutional in that it violates the Presentment Clause. Perhaps Sam Alito can change things. In 1986 as a lawyer for the Reagan Administration, Samuel Alito lauded the merits of signing statements when he helped attorney general Edwin Meese in developing a theory that signing statements should be used to help bolster the executive branch's interpretation of legislation. The use of presidential signing statements hints at an incipient dictatorship. Unfortunately, disillusioned Democrats can only attribute it to an unforgivable aberration on Alito’s record. While condemning Alito for having a substantive view of unitary executive theory, they fail to address the problem at its very bedrock. Much like the Downing Street Memos, signing statements will likely be dismissed as partisan nonsense and forgotten in months. Bush’s quest for unilateral executive power as commander-in-chief is surely nothing short of dictatorial. But it’s important to note that the issuance of signing statements is not being done at Bush’s behest. Assigning blame solely to Bush helps reinforce a false partisan debate. The sheer fact that the New York Times dedicated a half of a page in the January 16th edition about this topic proves that the agenda can no longer be hidden. The mainstream press is now relegated into a position of admitting the despotism but quickly whitewashing it. We know the New York Times sat on the NSA surveillance story for over a year on government orders. I wouldn’t be surprised if this is a similar scenerio. |
