NYT EDIT: ALITO's Invitation To DENY People Their Constitutional Rights

[kpete]

Editorial
Alito's Zeal for Presidential Power
Published: December 24, 2005

With the Bush administration claiming sweeping and often legally baseless authority to detain and spy on people, judges play a crucial role in underscoring the limits of presidential power. When the Senate begins hearings next month on Judge Samuel Alito, President Bush's Supreme Court nominee, it should explore whether he understands where the Constitution sets those limits. New documents released yesterday provide more evidence that Judge Alito has a skewed view of the allocation of power among the three branches - skewed in favor of presidential power.

One troubling memo concerns domestic wiretaps - a timely topic. In the memo, which he wrote as a lawyer in the Reagan Justice Department, Judge Alito argued that the attorney general should be immune from lawsuits when he illegally wiretaps Americans. Judge Alito argued for taking a step-by-step approach to establishing this principle, much as he argued for an incremental approach to reversing Roe v. Wade in another memo.

The Supreme Court flatly rejected Judge Alito's view of the law. In a 1985 ruling, the court rightly concluded that if the attorney general had the sort of immunity Judge Alito favored, it would be an invitation to deny people their constitutional rights.

In a second memo released yesterday, Judge Alito made another bald proposal for grabbing power for the president. He said that when the president signed bills into law, he should make a "signing statement" about what the law means. By doing so, Judge Alito hoped the president could shift courts' focus away from "legislative intent" - a well-established part of interpreting the meaning of a statute - toward what he called "the President's intent."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/24/opinion/24sat1.html

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

1. Well I guess we all now know why Bush REALLY thinks he is such a

super nominee! It's just so unfortunate and inconvenient that the executive branch has to have any hearings at all about who to pack the judiciary with.

[CJCRANE]

2. The idea of a "strong man" president

used to be popular in post-colonial third world countries but it always led to abuses. Now many countries (in Africa, for instance) are moving away from the "strong man" dictator model, so why should America go in reverse..?

[Arianrhod]

3. This is why Miers was put up first:

so that * could install the most anti-constitutionalist judge he could find. He knew that there was no way the Dems would approve of Alito. So his tactic was to put up an obviously unqualified strawman. His hope was that, being sated by the defeat of his first choice, no one would argue against the second one.

We need to tell our senators to oppose this guy at all costs.