There's something I've been curious about. President Bush has an opposition party in control of congress, as he did from mid-2001 to January 2003. Even though the rest of the time, congress was a virtual rubber stamp to his policies, there were times they went against him.

My point is, Bush is well known for flouting the will of the people, and has had a very contentious relationship with congress at times, yet he has only issued two vetoes. Why? Is it possible that the administration has fully intended him to exercise his veto power (a power clearly delineated in the constitution) as sparingly as possible, in order to issue these signing statements, establishing precedents for the unitary executive theory?

Enjoyed Savage's comments. If there is follow-up opportunity, I'd be interested to know if Savage follows any particular blogs, and how he views the evolving blogosphere generally. I'd also like to get his take on an issue sometimes discussed here--the melding of the blogosphere with more traditional political reporting--but this is a more complex question and might not be doable via written interview. Perhaps might be a topic better suited for a Moyers show (which was very good, I thought). Thanks GG.

Thanks for providing this. It is always good to be reminded that there are people out there doing the important work that needs to be done, and that while cynicism is usually justified, despair is not.

Of course , the fact that the best reporting we are exposed to comes via a number of radio shows, MSNBC, numerous bloggers and online columnists -- and Comedy Central's "The Colbert Report." should give us pause.

I also liked the use of the phrase:

a healthy degree of skepticism to official pageantry, be they press releases or elaborate bill signing ceremonies or anything else that is deliberately crafted for public consumption.

This is especially appropriate coming at the heels of the The White House Correspondents' Association Dinner, where all the poisonous effects of "Official Pageantry" come out in full force.

"I'll just mention one principle in particular which is important when writing about complex legal or policy matters: avoiding the easy route of "he said, she said" reporting, which does no favors to readers who don't have the time to become specialists in the subject themselves."

Thanks, Charlie. Here's hoping the rest of "Versailles" takes it to heart...

I think Savage has been reporting that signing statements are the unitary executive, or more properly part of it. The UE is not just some theory they wish were true--it is their current modus operandi.

And there is much less need for the executive to exercise constitutional power when he can exercise this unconstitutional one. For me, it is also a matter of politicization of the executive. Take the torture bill--there is no politically safe way to veto that bill. But if you can strip it with a signing statement, you get the best of both worlds. You're signing the bill, thus agreeing with the Congress, but you're also formally and explicitly ignoring the parts you don't like, as unitary executive. Thus robbing the Congress of much of its constitutional power. Pretty damn clever.

And they got away with this for a very long time.

I like the fact that Mr. Savage is using the term "subversion" in the title of his forthcoming book. Back in the '50's, when the major actors of our current regime were growing up, "subversives" were Teh Terrorists of the day, and Americans were expected to hunt them down and turn them in to the Authorities for trial and conviction. Failing that, one was expected to shun and denounce "subversives" in their midst. All rebellion of any kind was to be denounced as "subversive."

Well. 50 years on, and we find out that the Subversive Hordes infesting the country back in the day are now running things, if not directly, then through their surrogates in the media and private sector.

The Subversives Won.

I'm speaking of course of your Kristols, your Kagans, your Perles, and so on. Subversion has always been their plan, always been their chief endeavor, and realistically they have been very successful, astoundingly so. Their goal is totalitarian world domination, surprisingly the same goal as Teh Subversives of the 1950's, and latterly Teh Terrorists of Today.

While they have been astoundingly -- if not completely -- successful in subverting the American government (despite occasional signs of life, it still isn't functioning on anywhere near a Constitutional basis most of the time, and there are no significant challenges to the Presidential Power Grabs), they are as far from their goal of World Domination as when they started, if not actually farther away from it.

So one has to ask, "What do they really want?"

should be challenged in a court with the intent of getting the case before the supreme court even though the court is stacked with friends of the boy king.

I think it would be an interesting exercise although I would not expect a ruling that would be friendly to the constitution but there is always room for hope.

Another legal exercise is of course impeachment by the seemingly spineless Congress but again giving the atmosphere of corruption present in the beltway on both sides of the aisle that probably will not happen either.

This sentence in Savage's reply caught my eye:

No one else had access to my database, and it was understandable that others would be reluctant to invest the same amount of time and effort in catching up, when the end product would simply be to recreate a story the Globe had already published.

Would he consider making that database public? Obviously it's Savage's / the Globe's proprietary database that is the fruit of his work so he has every right now to, but we he consider doing so in the public interest?

I think this is a good topic for a future post. It speaks directly to the issue of executive overreach.

http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSN2518728220070426

Condoleezza Rice:

But there is a constitutional principle. This all took place in my role as national security adviser and there is a separation of powers and advisers to the president are -- under that constitutional principle -- not generally required to go and testify in Congress," she added. "So I think we have to observe and uphold constitutional principle.