Sen. Arlen Specter
The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Arlen Specter, is investigating the president. Sen. Specter joins us to discuss the investigation, as well as immigration reform.
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UPDATES: BUSH SIGNING STATEMENTS
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Senate panel denounces Bush for exploiting "signing statements"
By Jonathan Weisman
The Washington Post
WASHINGTON — A bipartisan group of senators and scholars denounced President Bush Tuesday for using scores of so-called "signing statements" to reserve the right to ignore or reinterpret provisions of legislation that he has signed into law.
Bush's statements have challenged a congressional ban on torture, a request for data on the administration of the USA Patriot Act, even a legislative demand for suggestions on the digital mapping of coastal resources.
Tuesday's Senate Judiciary Committee hearing marked the latest effort by committee Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., and panel Democrats to try to reclaim authority they say the president has usurped as he has expanded the power of the executive branch.
Other presidents have used signing statements to clarify their interpretation of laws, but no president has used such statements instead of using the veto authority spelled out in the Constitution, according to Harvard University law professor Charles Ogletree Jr., who is serving on a newly formed American Bar Association task force examining Bush's signing statements. Bush has never vetoed a bill.
"There is a sense that the president has taken the signing statements far beyond the customary purviews," Specter told the administration's representative, Michelle Boardman, the deputy assistant attorney general in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel. "There's a real issue here as to whether the president may, in effect, cherry-pick the provisions he likes and exclude the ones he doesn't like."
Democrats were more blunt, blasting Bush's signing statements — estimated to number more than 750 on 110 laws, more than all the statements issued by all other presidents combined.
"I've never seen anything like it," said Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the committee's ranking Democrat, calling the practice "a grave threat to our constitutional system of checks and balances."
Specter has been more aggressive than any other Republican in challenging Bush's expanding authority, pushing him to reshape his warrantless-wiretapping efforts to comply with existing law, threatening to summon telecommunications executives who have given the government access to customer phone records, and challenging the White House's legal arguments for indefinite detentions at the U.S. military base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
But Tuesday, Judiciary Committee members appealed to their fellow lawmakers, who Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., said have been "complicit as so many of our precious rights under the Constitution have been ceded away."
Boardman countered that presidents since James Monroe have issued statements of interpretation to accompany laws, and that every president since Dwight Eisenhower has issued statements reserving the right not to execute sections of laws that may contradict the Constitution.
By her accounting, Bush has issued such statements on 110 laws, compared with 80 from Bill Clinton, as many as 105 from Ronald Reagan and 147 from George H.W. Bush in a single term. But the younger Bush issued multiple statements on many of those laws for a total of 750.
"Even if there has been a modest increase, let me just suggest that it be viewed in light of current events and Congress' response to those events," she said. "The significance of legislation affecting national security has increased markedly since Sept. 11."
It has been the national-security related statements that have caused the most controversy. Last year, after months of difficult negotiations, Bush withdrew a veto threat and signed a defense-policy bill that included a provision by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., explicitly banning cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of prisoners at U.S. detention centers. But Bush's signing statement reserved the right to waive the torture ban if he concluded that some harsh interrogation techniques could advance the war on terrorism.
This year, after Congress reached a hard-fought agreement to extend the USA Patriot Act, expanding the power of federal law enforcement, the president questioned a provision calling for the administration to furnish Congress with detailed audits on the issuance of secret business-record searches and so-called National Security Letters.
Copyright © 2006 The Seattle Times Company
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Senate Judiciary Committee
Deals with apportionment of representatives, bankruptcy, mutiny, espionage, counterfeiting, civil...
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Members Senate Judiciary Committee
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LOU DOBBS TONIGHT
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Abbie (Abbott) Hoffman
November 30, 1936 – April 12, 1989
(The Chicago Seven)
Then: Steal This Movie! "Hell No We Won't Go!" Abbie Hoffman
AUDIO:
http://www.apfn.net/pogo/L001I060627-abbie-hoffman.MP3
Now: Bruce Springsteen: "Bring 'Em Home, Bring 'Em Home"
Bruce Springsteen sings "Bring 'Em Home, Bring 'Em Home" on NBC's Late Night with Conan O'Brien. The song is part of Springsteen's new album "We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions". The song is based on Seeger's Vietnam-era ballad "Bring 'Em Home".
http://www.apfn.org/apfn/abbie.htm
