by TChris

The Constitution empowers the president to veto bills that the legislature enacts. It does not authorize the president to rewrite legislation. Untroubled by constitutional or legislative limits on executive power, President Bush again used a signing statement to explain his anticipated disobedience of the proposed law that Congress sent him.

The statement repeatedly asserts that Homeland Security Appropriations Act "purports to" do certain things. It "purport[s] to require congressional committee approval for the execution of a law." It "purports to direct the conduct of security and suitability investigations." It "vests in the President authority to appoint the Administrator, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, but purports to limit the qualifications of the pool of persons from whom the President may select the appointee ..." The president claims that Congress can do none of these things.

Congress did not "purport" to do these things; Congress did them. If the president thought Congress passed an unconstitutional bill, he should have vetoed it. Can our strict constructionist president point to the constitutional language that permits him to ignore limits that Congress places on the executive powers that it enacts, or to deprive Congress of an oversight role in a law's implementation?

Charlie Savage at the Boston Globe explains how the president's power grab works to the detriment of FEMA, and of good government:

by TChris

Our second innocence case of the day (the first one is blogged here) involves Scott Fappiano, who was released today after serving 21 years for raping a police officer's wife. DNA tests established that he didn't do it.

Fappiano was arrested and first tried in 1984, despite blood-typing tests that failed to link him to cigarettes and stained clothing left at the crime scene. The main evidence against Fappiano was an identification by the rape victim, although he was five inches shorter than the 5-foot-10 attacker first described by the woman. The police officer, after viewing the same lineup, did not select Fappiano.

Fappiano's first jury deadlocked 11-1 in favor of acquittal. This is the poster case for the argument that charges should be dismissed after a jury hangs. The government should get one chance to convict, and that's it. Another trial increases the likelihood that an innocent man will serve time.

This is also the second post of the day to praise the Innocence Project for its good work in freeing an innocent man. How sad it is that it took 21 years for justice to arrive.

(Guest Post from Big Tent Democrat)

Desperation. David Brooks via Althouse:

The first predator, of course, is Mark Foley, the Florida congressman. The second predator is a character in Eve Ensler's play, "The Vagina Monologues."

Foley is now universally reviled. But the Ensler play, which depicts the secretary's affair with the 13-year-old as a glorious awakening, is revered.

Okaaay. Potatoe:

IF FOR NOTHING ELSE, DAN QUAYLE DESERVES POINTS for audacity. . . . [T]he Vice President dared to argue last week in a San Francisco speech that the Los Angeles riots were caused in part by a "poverty of values" that included the acceptance of unwed motherhood, as celebrated in popular culture by the CBS comedy series Murphy Brown.

Personally, I think Brooks had a Beavis and Butthead moment and wanted to use the word vagina in a column.

by TChris

Why did Jeffrey Deskovic spend 16 years in prison for a murder he didn't commit? According to Deskovic, part of the blame lies with former District Attorney Jeanine Pirro, now the Republican candidate for attorney general of New York, who refused his requests to retest DNA using advanced techniques. She made a huge mistake and, true to Republican form, refuses to take responsibility for it. But many others made the same mistake, and as a result, Deskovic lost 16 years of his life.

Last month, prosecutors agreed to free Jeffrey Deskovic, who had been convicted in [Angela] Correa's rape and murder. They said new tests on old DNA, conducted at the urging of the Innocence Project, a nonprofit legal clinic and criminal justice resource center, implicated another man.

Steven Cunningham recently confessed to killing Angela Correa. While Deskovic languished in prison for 16 years, Cunningham committed another murder.

More details of Deskovic's wrongful conviction, based in part on a false confession, are reported here. Kudos to Claudia Whitman who helped Deskovic achieve justice, and to the Innocence Project for its great work on the case.

(Guest Post from Big Tent Democrat)

Scott Lemieux pens a very interesting article on the Dred Scott decision and its merits and meaning in today's law and politics. It is worth reading in its entirety but I want to focus on a few points made by Lemieux:

. . . George W. Bush -- demonstrating the forthright advocacy of conservative jurisprudence for which Republicans are famous -- went out of his way to assure the public during one of the 2004 presidential debates that he would not, in fact, appoint Supreme Court justices who would interfere with the ability of Congress to ban slavery in Puerto Rico. Bush's strange remarks were widely interpereted as a dog-whistle signal to his anti-abortion-rights base, some of whose intellectuals (most notably Justice Scalia in his dissents in Planned Parenthood v. Casey and Stenberg v, Carhart) have compared Roe v. Wade to Dred Scott. Jeffrey Rosen turned this comparison against Scalia in his merciless evisceration of the justice's support for the Court's egregious Bush v. Gore decision. And on it goes. But should this much weight really be put on Dredd Scott?

. . . The most common attack on Dred Scott, however, does not concern the finer points of interpretive theory. Rather, it's a critique borne out of a romanticized view of legislatures as being better able to resolve difficult social questions than courts. . . .

It may have been the most common attack but it was not the best one. Abraham Lincoln, most notably in his Cooper Union address, presented, to me at least, the most devastating arguments against the legal correctness of the Dred Scott decision. I'll discuss that and a few other things on the other side.

by TChris

The Bush administration has given us plenty to protest. Yesterday, in a day of protest organized by The World Can't Wait, people gathered together in more than 200 cities to express their displeasure with the Bush Administration. In New York:

Thousands of protesters clogged New York City's streets as they marched from the United Nations headquarters. Some people lay down in the middle of the street, while others carried signs saying "Expose 9/11" and "This war should be over." They also handed out fliers reading, "Drive out the Bush regime."

In Washington D.C.:

by TChris

Incumbent legislators who brag to their constituents during the next few weeks about supporting the construction of a 700 mile fence along the Mexican border aren't likely to tell the rest of the story: much of the money appropriated for the project won't be spent on the fence.

[S]hortly before recessing late Friday, the House and Senate gave the Bush administration leeway to distribute the money to a combination of projects -- not just the physical barrier along the southern border. The funds may also be spent on roads, technology and "tactical infrastructure" to support the Department of Homeland Security's preferred option of a "virtual fence."

The fence is a symbol, an expensive monument to simple-minded and ineffective solutions to complex problems. But it's also a cynical campaign lie that "reflects political calculations by GOP strategists that voters do not mind the details."

by TChris

The internet is not Las Vegas -- where, if you believe the advertising, you can be bad as you wanna be without fear that your spouse/friends/boss will learn of your (mis)adventures. What happens on the internet might not stay on the internet. It might instead be published in a newspaper.

Mark Foley learned that lesson the hard way. So did Justice of the Peace Sam Harris, who made some vulgar comments (reported here and here) in an internet chatroom. Harris is running for reelection, but the disclosure of his chatroom antics may imperil his campaign. A few Cascade County, Montana voters who have already cast absentee ballots in his favor are trying to change their votes. Can't be done, says the county clerk. What goes on the ballot stays on the ballot.

Speaking of Foley, here are ABC's latest disclosures, based on information provided by three more pages.

(Guest Post from Big Tent Democrat)

Beating Atrios to the punch:

The chairman, Senator John W. Warner of Virginia, expressed particular concern that Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki had not moved decisively against sectarian militias.

"In two or three months if this thing hasn't come to fruition and this level of violence is not under control, I think it's a responsibility of our government to determine: Is there a change of course we should take?" Senator Warner said.

What's the rest of the "Broder independent center" Party (McCain, Graham, Lieberman) have to say about this? Hey Joe, isn't this emboldening the "terrorist bloggers" or something? Or maybe I should be asking Broder that question?

(Guest Post from Big Tent Democrat)

Lieberman again reverted to his partisanship theme.

"I know some people are calling for [House Speaker Dennis] Hastert to resign, but the truth is that unless he knows what he saw and he saw something he should have acted on, he deserves to have essentially a fact-finder to come in," Lieberman said.

"The Foley case bothers people," he added. "If anyone thinks they can make this into another partisan flap, it's not. It's very real and human. The House Republican leaders and, frankly, the Democratic leadership, should not make it partisan."

(Guest Post from Big Tent Democrat)

Having slinked out of Washington in embarrassment after his favorite "independent centerists" (McCain, Lieberman, Warner, Graham) rubberstamped Bush's atrocious detainee bill, David Broder went to California to proclaim Ahnold's cave-in to Democrats as a great victory for his "Independence" Party. Rightly and roundly ridiculed again for his foolishness, Broder headed to Massachusetts to find independence.

But he runs into Deval Patrick, the Democratic nominee for Governor, who enjoys a huge lead. Now the thing about Patrick, the most interesting thing, was his unabashed embrace of liberal Democratic values and how he came from upstart to landslide running as a member of the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party. Indeed, he was strongly supported by Broder's nemesis, the "vituperative" Left blogosphere. But this does not interest Broder. What does interest him?

(Guest Post from Big Tent Democrat)

Those of us who despaired of Weepin' Joe Lieberman (I-Green Room) years ago have not been surprised by anything he's done over the past six months. He's always been a puling, mewling opportunist who'd sell his grandmother to the Malay pirates for a pat on the head from a jackleg preacher, or 15 minutes of banter on Don Imus's Wrinkle Farm, where he recently made giddy fun of the demolition of the Geneva Conventions. He's never breathed a political moment in which he was not John Breaux in a hairshirt.

Man he's good. And right. Read the whole thing.