http://www.boston.com/news/politics/2008/specials/CandidateQA/question6/(more questions and answers at link)
... Question 6
Does executive privilege cover testimony or documents about decision-making within the executive branch not involving confidential advice communicated to the president himself?
Barack Obama
With respect to the “core” of executive privilege, the Supreme Court has not resolved this question, and reasonable people have debated it. My view is that executive privilege generally depends on the involvement of the President and the White House.
Hillary Clinton
I fundamentally believe that our constitutional system depends upon each branch striving to accommodate the interests of the other, and the President should seek to accommodate legitimate congressional requests for information. I also believe in an open transparent government that fulfills its obligation to share as much information as possible with the public. But it is settled law that certain limited "communications made by presidential advisors in the course of preparing advice for the President, come under the presidential communications privilege, even when these communications are not made directly to the President."
Question 4
Under what circumstances, if any, would you sign a bill into law but also issue a signing statement reserving a constitutional right to bypass the law?
Barack Obama
Signing statements have been used by presidents of both parties, dating back to Andrew Jackson. While it is legitimate for a president to issue a signing statement to clarify his understanding of ambiguous provisions of statutes and to explain his view of how he intends to faithfully execute the law, it is a clear abuse of power to use such statements as a license to evade laws that the president does not like or as an end-run around provisions designed to foster accountability.
I will not use signing statements to nullify or undermine congressional instructions as enacted into law. The problem with this administration is that it has attached signing statements to legislation in an effort to change the meaning of the legislation, to avoid enforcing certain provisions of the legislation that the President does not like, and to raise implausible or dubious constitutional objections to the legislation. The fact that President Bush has issued signing statements to challenge over 1100 laws – more than any president in history – is a clear abuse of this prerogative. No one doubts that it is appropriate to use signing statements to protect a president's constitutional prerogatives; unfortunately, the Bush Administration has gone much further than that.
Hillary Clinton
I have opposed the Bush Administration's abuse of signing statements, and as President, I would not use signing statements to disagree on policy grounds with legislation passed by Congress or as an end run around the veto. I would only use signing statements in very rare instances to note and clarify confusing or contradictory provisions, including provisions that contradict the Constitution. My approach would be to work with Congress to eliminate or correct unconstitutional provisions before legislation is sent to my desk....
Also, this was posted previously at unbossed.com:
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Clinton not sure whether Unitary Executive has gone too far
Hillary Clinton in her own words is almost always more disappointing than the ideal candidate of her supporters' imagination. Today Michael Tomasky of the Guardian publishes an interview with her that ought to make your heart sink, that is if your heart is able to stomach all the equivocations. ... ...
I want to start with some questions about foreign policy and terrorism. If you become president you'll enter the White House with far more power than, say, your husband had. What is your view of this? And what specific powers might you relinquish as president, or renegotiate with Congress - for example the power to declare a US citizen an enemy combatant?
Well, I think it is clear that the power grab undertaken by the Bush-Cheney administration has gone much further than any other president and has been sustained for longer. Other presidents, like Lincoln, have had to take on extraordinary powers but would later go to the Congress for either ratification or rejection. But when you take the view that they're not extraordinary powers, but they're inherent powers that reside in the office and therefore you have neither obligation to request permission nor to ask for ratification, we're in a new territory here. And I think that I'm gonna have to review everything they've done because I've been on the receiving end of that. There were a lot of actions which they took that were clearly beyond any power the Congress would have granted or that in my view that was inherent in the constitution. There were other actions they've taken which could have obtained congressional authorization but they deliberately chose not to pursue it as a matter of principle.
I guess I'm asking, can a president, once in the White House, actually give up some of this power in the name of constitutional principle?
Oh, absolutely, Michael. I mean that has to be part of the review that I undertake when I get to the White House, and I intend to do that.
~snip~
"I think I'm gonna have to review everything they've done..." Why review? Hasn't the Senator from New York been paying sufficient attention during the last 6 years that she can declare definitively that she'll renounce powers that George W. Bush assumed? The question was not "Will you think about it?", but "What specific powers might you relinquish?".
"they took that were clearly beyond any power the Congress would have granted or that in my view that was inherent in the constitution." Taking actions without authority is merely the nub end of the problem. The real problem is that Bush takes actions that violate the letter and spirit of the Constitution.
It should have been relatively easy for Clinton to list a long series of presidential "powers" that she would renounce. In fact, Tomasky feeds her one suggestion in the question itself: the "power to declare a US citizen an enemy combatant". Yet Hillary Clinton cannot bring herself to identify a single power that she's definitely prepared to renounce before taking the oath to protect and uphold the Constitution.
~snip~...
That unbossed entry was based on this Tomasky's interview/article from The Guardian:
... On executive power, I pointed out that if elected she would be entering the White House with far more power than her husband had as a result of moves by Bush and Dick Cheney to invest a degree of unilateral power in the executive branch that some find dangerous. "Well, I think it is clear that the power grab undertaken by the Bush-Cheney administration has gone much further than any other president and has been sustained for longer," Clinton said. "Other presidents like Lincoln have had to take on extraordinary powers but would later go to the Congress for either ratification or rejection."
She continued: "There were a lot of actions which they took that were clearly beyond any power the Congress would have granted or that in my view that was inherent in the constitution. There were other actions they've taken which could have obtained congressional authorisation but they deliberately chose not to pursue it as a matter of principle."
Here I asked whether a sitting president, once invested with such powers, could really give some of them up in the name of constitutional principle. Clinton said: "Oh, absolutely, Michael. I mean that has to be part of the review that I undertake when I get to the White House, and I intend to do that." ...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/oct/23/hillaryclinton.usa
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
