Today’s Boston Globe has an interesting story on David Addington and Presidential signing statements. I was particularly interested in the views of Doug Kmiec, a Reagan-era head of OLC:
Douglas Kmiec , who as head of the Office of Legal Counsel helped develop the Reagan administration’s strategy of issuing signing statements more frequently, said he disapproves of the “provocative” and sometimes “disingenuous” manner in which the Bush administration is using them.
Kmiec said the Reagan team’s goal was to leave a record of the president’s understanding of new laws only in cases where an important statute was ambiguous. Kmiec rejected the idea of using signing statements to contradict the clear intent of Congress, as Bush has done. Presidents should either tolerate provisions of bills they don’t like, or they should veto the bill, he said.
“Following a model of restraint, [the Reagan-era Office of Legal Counsel] took it seriously that we were to construe statutes to avoid constitutional problems, not to invent them,” said Kmiec, who is now a Pepperdine University law professor.
Link via How Appealing.
The Globe story is made all the more interesting when it’s read alongside the Saturday WashPost’s article on the Jefferson search. Apparently Addington was a major critic — not proponent — of the FBI’s raid on a legislative office.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/26/AR2006052601016.html