What about those signing statements?

During the GOP controlled congress, those Presidential signing statements were pretty useful documents. Has the president forgotten about those now that the Democrats control the Congress?

If you'll recall, the president issued a signing statement, for one example, after a "compromise" anti-torture bill. Remember the one John McCain fought so hard for? And then the President basically nullified the law with a signing statement that said, "I don't have to follow this law"?

Here's what Glenn Greenwald wrote about it at the time:

By themselves, signing statements have no legal or constitutional significance. The issuance of signing statements changes nothing. They do not create presidential powers nor do they confer rights of any kind. They are really nothing more than declarations of presidential belief, documents which state how the President understands a particular law.

In that regard, I believe these signing statements actually perform a critically important service. They bring out into the open the theories of monarchical power which this administration has adopted. By expressly stating in the signing statements that he has the right to violate these law, the President is explicitly acknowledging that he has seized these powers. The signing statement itself is not the instrument by which he has seized those powers, but is merely a reflection -- an overt acknowledgment -- of the fact that the President has, in fact, seized those powers. It is the powers themselves, and not the statements in which they are asserted, that are so significant.

Mahablog wrote about it, too, here.

I've always been very suspicious of those signing statements. I have been suspicious that the White House really believed they were acting legally.

Try to follow my logic here. Logic, speculation, whatever you want to call it.

What if the WH came up with signing statements as a way to get political cover for their Republican colleagues on the Hill, while still not really following the law that they just signed only to give their colleagues political cover? You follow me?

In other words, maybe the John McCains of Washington said, "Look, this torture issue is killing me in my state. You gotta let me send up an anti-torture bill you can sign so we can put this issue to bed." And the White House said, "OK, send up a bill and I will sign it, but I'll issue a signing statment that says I don't have to follow it. And we'll both be happy." And maybe the WH knew this wasn't legal, or constitutional, but figured, as long as the GOP Congress doesn't challenge us on it, we're OK. So they colluded on it: the WH wouldn't embarrass the GOP-Congress by vetoing the bill, and the Congress wouldn't embarrass the President by challenging his signing statement. And everyone got what they wanted, and everyone was happy.

I've been thinking about this a lot since the Democrats passed a spending bill with a withdrawal timeline. Why doesn't the President just sign the bill, get his funding, then issue a signing statement that just says "As commander in chief, I don't have to follow the timeline." As Greenwald says, this statement of presidential belief holds no weight legally, in spite of the President's insistence. It is only through the collusion of a Republican Congress that the signing statments have any meaning at all.

Score a victory for the Democratic Congress. Just by being there, they have killed the signing statements. The Democratic Congress has proved what the signing statements really were: just a symbol of the immoral collusion between the Congress and administration. The fact that Bush is considering a veto shows that the signing statement mentality is dead.

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