Strong executive or Rule of Law?

[domer]

You want the answer I'd give Chief Justice Roberts or the president-pro-tem of the Roswell City Council?

[BT]

How about one absent quibbles and bits.

[domer]

Yes.

[BT]

Care to provide a supreme court decision that backs your claim?

[domer]

Care to define "unconstitutional"? Simple answers are fine, I guess, when they suit your purposes but not otherwise.

[BT]

Care to define "unconstitutional"?

Contrary to the constitution as written or as determined by supreme court decisions touching on the matter.

Signing letters have been around for quite a while. Have the courts ruled on their constitutionality or simply ruled on their weight?

[domer]

Signing statements as employed by the Bush Administration are similar in constitutionality to, for example, a court-packing initiative.

[BT]

Signing statements as employed by the Bush Administration are similar in constitutionality to, for example, a court-packing initiative.

Please elaborate. Are the signings by Bush more onerous than those by Clinton.

The court packing intiative was not unconstitutional in that the constitution does not specify the number of justices sitting. It did require an act of congress.

Fortunately wiser heads prevailed.

But if the signings are similiar to the courtpacking initiative one of the things in common they did share was that both are constitutional, contrary to your answer.

[domer]

I think Bush's signing-statement strategy was more constitutionally burdensome than Clinton's because, for myriad reasons some of which I've alluded to earlier but won't repeat, the Bush approach made an attempt or at least a show at usurpation, a strategy that is destined for failure in the courts but which, unchecked before that, can skew the political process and particularly both the perceived and actual prerogatives of the coordinate branches, and thus the system of checks and balances. Further, in a broad notion of constitutionality greater than a mere positivist conception that the law is what the courts say it is, it is proper and wise to idealize both the principles but also the functioning of the federal structure such that a "workable consensus" can be achieved and (most of the time) "wiser heads [can] prevail."

[BT]

But the fact remains both Clinton's and Bush's signings are and were constitutional, absent a ruling from SCOTUS indicating otherwise. If you don't like Bush's show of usurpation, the political process has a remedy. But to state that signings go against the rule of law is simply ignorant or duplicitous or both.

[domer]

Well, then, call me "ignorant or duplicitous or both." (That is, BT, we disagree on this one.)

[BT]

What we disagree upon is Bush's use of the signing statements. I don't think you truly believe them unconstitutional, i do think you believe them unwise and possibly a warning about the Unitary Executive philosophy. And that is fine. There is a political remedy for that.

And hopefully candidates from both parties will be examined closely on the subject of signing statements.

[domer]

Yes, BT, with all the grandeur and authority of your councilman's seat in a lonely Atlanta burb, please lecture me on the complexities of the concepts of constitutional/unconstitutional, then publish it someplace where you don't have an audience dependent on your good graces.

[BT]

Yes, BT, with all the grandeur and authority of your councilman's seat in a lonely Atlanta burb, please lecture me on the complexities of the concepts of constitutional/unconstitutional, then publish it someplace where you don't have an audience dependent on your good graces.

Let's clear the air.

I have never ever banned anyone from this board for disagreeing with me. Why would you imply that if, having been a member of this board since the beginning, you know that for a fact. My good graces have nothing to do with the merits of my argument nor does it have anything to do with the demerits in yours.

[domer]

For my tastes, your style in "managing a debate" is often heavy-handed, often bizarrely anti-intellectual, and often in-your-face provocative, which, when greeted with language and sentiments commensurate to the insult, can get a poster suspended, as I have been more than once.