JOHN BRUMMETT Advertisement

If we want an American emperor to fight the war on terror, we ought to go ahead and amend the Constitution. We should take out the parts about democracy and a republic and individual liberties and the three supposedly co-equal branches of government that exist to provide checks and balances on each other.

If we want to have such an American emperor, we ought to decide whether we'd really like it to be a guy who didn't even get the most votes for mere president, the one supposedly checked and balanced, the first time he ran.

Last week, U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter, a moderate Republican from Pennsylvania who seems to appreciate constitutional principle, joined the American Bar Association in bearing down on yet another unilateral and dictatorial assertion of terrorism-era powers by a president who must not be as bumbling as he seems considering that he is systematically pulling a stealth coup.

It turns out that George W. Bush, on more than 800 occasions, has signed bills but concurrently issued "signing statements" by which he says the law he just made by his signature will be effective unless he says otherwise.

Other presidents have used this device. But Bush has used it more than all his predecessors put together, mostly because, he says, the terror threat presents extraordinary circumstances.

The authority for "signing statements" is not expressly constitutional, and never was, even for use just once. Under the Constitution, a president is to sign a law, veto it or let it become law. He doesn't even have the power to pick sections of bills for what are called line-item vetoes.

But Bush says, as others have said before in rationalizing far more limited use of these signing statements, that the constitutional powers inherent in the presidency bestow the right to act in the nation's supposed best interests to put aside the occasional section of a law.

Bush has lifted the practice well beyond the occasional. It's no wonder the stem cell veto was the first of his presidency. He had been vetoing madly without saying so. On more than 800 occasions, he had put out little side statements effectively saying essentially that he might privately veto sections later.

Now this president has used the dubious device to an extent that we, Specter and the ABA, anyway, can't stand idly by and ignore the imperial implications.

Specter is preparing a lawsuit and the ABA is touting a new report by a bipartisan commission that found "signing statements" by any president under any circumstance to be unconstitutional.

Here's an example: Embarrassed and outraged by reports of American torture of military prisoners in Iraq, a noted former war prisoner, U.S. Sen. John McCain, pushed through legislation requiring the country to abide by international rules on prisoner treatment and not engage in torture. Bush signed the bill. But it turns out that he also threw in a "signing statement" by which he, as commander in chief, reserved to himself the authority to disregard the law if he saw a need.

Yes, the world ever changes. Yes, a war on terror differs from other wars. But let's disregard for the moment that our unprovoked invasion of Iraq, where some of this prisoner abuse took place, had nothing directly to do with the war against the organization that attacked us on 9/11.

The simple question remains whether citizens of the world's greatest experiment in liberty and accountable government will stand for it while a president reserves the personal right to torture people on our behalf and in our name, and otherwise ignore laws to suit purposes he assures us will serve our best interests.

<i>John Brummett is an award-winning columnist for the Arkansas News Bureau in Little Rock and author of "High Wire," a book about Bill Clinton's first year as president. His e-mail address is <a href="mailto:jbrummett@arkansasnews.com">jbrummett@arkansasnews.com</a>.</i>