King's Fiat or Bush Rewriting Laws

Huge props to Greyhair for picking this up.

In an article headlined, Alito Once Made Case for Presidential Power, from Monday, the WaPo vaguely outlines Bush's use of "interpretive signing statements."

Such "interpretive signing statements" (as proposed by Alito in '86 - mike) would be a significant departure from run-of-the-mill bill signing pronouncements, which are "often little more than a press release," Alito wrote. The idea was to flag constitutional concerns and get courts to pay as much attention to the president's take on a law as to "legislative intent." .....

President Bush has been especially fond of them, issuing at least 108 in his first term, ....

The Bush administration "has very effectively expanded the scope and character of the signing statement not only to address specific provisions of legislation that the White House wishes to nullify, but also in an effort to significantly reposition and strengthen the powers of the presidency relative to the Congress,"

From what I'm reading here, these are not in any way binding to the courts, but in the case of a dispute between the Whitehouse and Congress, the Whitehouse could claim "they knew what we were going to do." And Greyhair claims that within the Bush admin, these findings are treated as interpretations of the law until there's a court case saying they're not. (see - torture practices as an example.)

Just really interesting to me.

Also, notice that Alito supports an executive with "dictatorial powers" just like John Roberts did in Hamdi.