Presidential Signing Statements .... "Courts & Congress irrelevant"

[RedEarth]

There are two ways President Bush likes to wage war on your civil liberties: He either asks you to surrender your rights directly—as he does when he strengthens and broadens provisions of the Patriot Act. Or he simply hoovers up new powers and hopes you won't find out—as he did when he granted himself authority to order warrant-less wiretapping of American citizens. The former category seems more benign, and it's tempting to lump Bush's affinity for "presidential signing statements" in that camp. It's tempting to believe that with these statements he is merely asking that the courts take his legal views into account. But President Bush never asks anything of the courts; he doesn't think he has to.His signing statements are not aimed at persuading the courts, but at reinforcing his claim that both courts and Congress are irrelevant.

http://www.slate.com/id/2134919/

[Ian David]

1. Last night he asked for a line-item veto too

Court Strikes Down Line-Item Veto

By Helen Dewar and Joan Biskupic
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, June 26, 1998; Page A01

The Supreme Court yesterday struck down the broad new line-item veto authority that Congress had given the president to cancel specific items in spending and tax bills.

Within a couple of hours of the ruling, the law's backers announced they will try again to find a constitutional way to expand the president's powers to cut pork-barrel expenditures.

In a 6 to 3 decision, the court held that the line-item veto law violates a constitutional requirement that legislation be passed by both houses of Congress and presented in its entirety to the president for signature or veto.

Passage of the legislation in 1996 and its implementation in 1997 climaxed more than a century of struggle by presidents for this new authority. It was a rare unilateral yielding of power by Congress to the chief executive, prompted by Congress's increasing concern over its own lack of fiscal discipline. President Clinton, who had line-item veto powers as governor of Arkansas, signed the bill with relish and moved quickly, although cautiously, to begin trimming spending bills.

More:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/supcourt/stories/wp062698.htm