The stench coming out of the White House is more
nauseating than usual. For months, Bush, Cheney & Gang had fought
tenaciously to kill U.S. Sen. John McCain’s bill to outlaw the U.S.
government’s use of torture against prisoners of war. The Bush
administration tried to cajole McCain into at least exempting the CIA from
the torture ban and even threatened to veto the bill, but McCain
wouldn’t cave in. Finally, after Congress passed the ban by
veto-proof majorities, Bush called in McCain just before Christmas,
embraced him and the bill, and said that he would sign it. It was a nice,
fuzzy political moment. But you’d sooner trust your last pork chop with
a coyote than trust Bush. With Congress adjourned for the holidays, and
with most of the media absent as well, Bush did sign the bill on Dec. 30.
But, very quietly, he also issued a “signing statement.” This
is an official document in which a president can offer his own
interpretation of what a new law means. Bush’s statement declares
that he will construe the law as binding except in cases where he thinks it
conflicts “with the constitutional authority of the President . . .
as Commander-in-Chief.”
In other words, by executive fiat, Bush is trying to
gouge a massive loophole in a bill that was meant by Congress to close all
loopholes. He’s saying that he still has the inherent power to
authorize torturing people whenever he sees fits — Congress and plain
morality be damned. Here is yet another attempt by this president to
place himself above the rule of the law. The founders provided for three
co-equal branches of government and a system of checks and balances
precisely to prevent such dangerous efforts by a president to establish a
supreme executive.
This article appears in Jan 19-25, 2006.
