More on Signing Statements

Robert Kuttner:

Last week, signing a bill banning torture in interrogations that was forced on him by senior Republican senators, Bush asserted a concept never imagined by the Constitution's framers or permitted by any court -- a ''signing statement" claiming his right to interpret a law in his own fashion and to disregard aspects of it that he doesn't like.

It takes an independent judiciary to balance needs of liberty against claims of executive power in national emergencies. But Alito's views of the imperial presidency are almost perfectly in sync with Bush's.

All of the above is exaggerated or untrue.