President Bush: "I AM the law!"

Way back in my 5th grade social studies course, I learned that the American form of government is divided into three branches, each providing checks and balances on the other. I learned that Congress makes law, the executive enforces law, and the judiciary interprets law. Now granted this was somewhat over-simplified for my 5th grade brain, but for the most part that summation is pretty accurate. President Bush however has demonstrated his willingness to alter that formula somewhat, at least in times of "war". We've already seen that as far as domestic intelligence gathering by the NSA goes, the President has decided that he has the authority to allow the NSA to do what normally would require a court order. It also appears the President has reserved the right to subject detainees to cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment despite signing a very specific piece of legislation that bans such treatment. The editors over at the Washington Post have a bit of a problem with this:

The president made his intentions clear in signing the defense bill containing the McCain amendment last month. Mr. Bush issued a presidential signing statement saying his administration would interpret the new law "in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the President to supervise the unitary executive branch and as Commander in Chief and consistent with the constitutional limitations on the judicial power." The language refers to the assertion by the president's lawyers that his powers allow him, in wartime, to ignore statutes passed by Congress. The White House has intimated that it has similar authority in justifying Mr. Bush's authorization of surveillance of Americans without court approval, in violation of another law. The signing statement also advanced the administration's view that the McCain amendment does not provide for any court review of a prisoner's claim of cruel treatment, and that all appeals by foreign prisoners before the courts should be dismissed.

Even before the statement was issued, administration lawyers had taken the position that the McCain amendment would not necessarily end the use of waterboarding. "Cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment" has been defined by the Senate as any act that would violate the Fifth, Eighth or 14th amendments of the Constitution. Yet according to the reasoning of the Justice Department, simulated drowning and other techniques falling just short of torture would still be permitted under this standard "in certain circumstances." This extreme view has never been tested in court, sanctioned by Congress or even fully exposed to public view. Mr. Bush hopes to keep it that way. That's why his administration has moved so aggressively to prevent prisoners' cases from reaching federal courts and refused to release secret legal memos requested by Congress.

Since the President has pretty much reserved the authority to do whatever he wants despite Congress' every attempt to limit his actions in this respect, one has to wonder what all the hoopla was about getting an exemption in the ban for the CIA. Clearly the administration thinks it's more politically palatable to get a specific exemption in the bill then it is to simply claim sweeping authority. They may be right, in the sense that there's possibly thousands of people out there somewhere who think that the former is more acceptable then the latter. The real problem of course is that President Bush has decided that in nearly all matters related to war, his authority is the final authority, his word the final word, that we should not only trust him on this, but that in fact it's not even up to us. But that's not what the Framers intended, that's not what the American public approves of, and I'm pretty sure even a 5th grader could figure that out.