[Echo Talon]

lol

[wouldntbprudent]

call the wwwwhhhhhaaaammmmbulance: Acute Misunderstimation Injuries!

[StarFan]

What we have here is a prime example of folie a deux (a rare paranoid psychosis shared by two people in which the weaker one usually adopts the delusional system of the stronger). Apparently McShame's illness of the ego is contagious and I pray people of SC grow as tired of it as I am.

[OkiMusashi]

The article left out some key events:

"After issuing the signing statement, Bush announced the replacement of Harry Reid and installed Joe Lieberman as the new Senate Minority Leader and then he delivered 10,000 traffic cases to the United States Supreme Court and ordered their immediate review."

My point?

The Constitution dictates the powers and duties of the President, not Congress, and not the USSC. Bush was just staking out his territory and reminding 'em of the "way things are". :)

LOL ... does anybody really think that Congress REALLY wants a final judgement on this issue? They will never press it. In the future, Congressmen will point at the law that they have written and blow hot air, Bush and future Presidents will shrug at it and do whatever Commander-in-Chiefs in war have to do, anyway, and the USSC will be happy to sit on the sidelines.

[Dawgreg]

Well, it's time for Arizona, Virginia and South Carolina to do some blasting then. Blast these three idiots outta office. Are you listening voters?????

[Zechariah11]

Three key Republican senators yesterday condemned President Bush's assertion that his powers as commander in chief give him the authority to bypass a new law restricting the use of torture when interrogating detainees.

Good for Bush! I didn't know he had done this. Does anyone know a Republican who backs McVain for Presidency.

[skr]

Sounds like a case for an executive order based upon the commander-in-chief's constitutional duty to the people of the United States of America.

[Mike Darancette]

Q: What do John W. Warner, John McCain, and Lindsey O. Graham have in Common?

A: They are not Constitutionally vested with the duty to save American lives.

[Cboldt]

Another summary at http://www.livejournal.com/users/mparent7777/5448252.html

So Much for the President's Assent to the McCain Amendment
Monday, January 02, 2006

Marty Lederman

The President signed the Defense Appropriations bill on Friday. In his signing statement he did at least two notable things.

First, with respect to several provisions of the bill, the President signaled his intention to reserve his authority, as Commander in Chief, to ignore statutory mandates. These include provisions that require advance notice of congressional committees before the use of funds to initiate a special access program, a new overseas installation, or a new start program; and a "report and wait" provision that requires the President to wait 15 days after notifying six congressional committees before using certain appropriations to transfer defense articles or services to another nation or an international organization for international peacekeeping, peace enforcement, or humanitarian assistance operations.

Most importantly, as to the McCain Amendment, which would categorically prohibit cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of detainees by all U.S. personnel, anywhere in the world, the President wrote:

The executive branch shall construe Title X in Division A of the Act, relating to detainees, in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the President to supervise the unitary executive branch and as Commander in Chief and consistent with the constitutional limitations on the judicial power, which will assist in achieving the shared objective of the Congress and the President, evidenced in Title X, of protecting the American people from further terrorist attacks.

Translation: I reserve the constitutional right to waterboard when it will "assist" in protecting the American people from terrorist attacks. [UPDATE: Or, as Matthew Franck eagerly puts it over at the National Review, "the signing statement . . . conveys the good news that the president is not taking the McCain amendment lying down."]

You didn't think Cheney and Addington were going to go down quietly, did you? (And this even though they took their opponents to the cleaners by negotiating the Graham Amendments, which, by precluding substantial avenues of judicial review, are far more beneficial to their detention and interrogation policies than the McCain Amendment is detrimental.)

Questions of the hour: How, if at all, will McCain respond? And will these questions of presidential authority to ignore statutory restrictions on the conduct of war -- implicated as well in the current NSA wiretapping scandal -- be front and center in the upcoming Alito hearings?