A lot of things in life just dont make sense unless you have enough information about the people or the principles involved. This is especially true with the last 5 years of President Cheney's rule.
Invading Iraq? Well that was a tenet of the Neoconservative movement. Saying that our nations laws dont apply to you because you are the President? That is part of this "unitary executive" theory.
The first part of this article is about Alito but the more interesting part explains "unitary executive" theory and its history. (Looking for evidence that Bush really is better than Reagan and his father combined? Reagan invoked the unitary executive 1 times, Bush senior 6 times but W used it 110 times and counting.)
Judge Alito's View Of the Presidency: Expansive Powers
Court Pick Endorsed Theory Of Far-Reaching Authority; Tenet of Bush White House
A Debate Over Terror Tactics
January 5, 2006
In November 2000, while the nation fixated on whether George W. Bush or Al Gore would emerge victorious from the electoral confusion in Florida, Judge Samuel Alito laid out his view of what powers the future president would hold.
The Constitution "makes the president the head of the executive branch, but it does more than that," Judge Alito said in a speech to the Federalist Society at Washington's Mayflower Hotel. "The president has not just some executive powers, but the executive power -- the whole thing."
Judge Alito was describing the theory of the "unitary executive," an expansive view of presidential powers that he and his colleagues set forth while working in the Office of Legal Counsel of the Reagan Justice Department. Although the Supreme Court has not always agreed, he said in his speech, "I thought then, and I still think, that this theory best captures the meaning of the Constitution's text and structure."
President Bush has repeatedly invoked this theory as he asserts broad presidential powers to fight the war on terror.
...
"At its core, the unitary executive is the notion that the Constitution gives the president the executive power, and it includes the power to superintend and control subordinates in the executive branch," says Northwestern University law professor Steven Calabresi, who helped develop the theory in the Reagan Justice Department and has written extensively on its historical basis.
Adherents to the theory -- called unitarians -- reject the view that regulatory agencies should operate independent of political control. The White House should have final say over rules and decisions issued by the federal bureaucracy, they say.
An August 2002 memorandum signed by Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee advised that "even if an interrogation method arguably were to violate [an anti-torture law], the statute would be unconstitutional if it impermissibly encroached on the president's constitutional power to conduct a military campaign." President Bush has since appointed Mr. Bybee to a federal appeals court.
The Justice Department later withdrew that internal legal opinion, but it has not backed away from its theory on presidential power, which also underlies the domestic surveillance program and the detention of U.S. citizens as enemy combatants. In all three instances, the president has asserted an inherent power to take actions that critics say are contrary to specific laws -- respectively, the 1994 Torture Statute, the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and the 1971 Non-Detention Act.
"If the theory were wrong, there would be no way the Bush administration's antiterrorism policies could be constitutionally justified," says Mr. Calabresi, co-chairman of the Federalist Society, which he co-founded in 1982.
Supporters and opponents of expansive presidential powers disagree about the intent of the Constitution's framers. In his 2000 speech, Judge Alito argued that the framers "saw the unitary executive as necessary to balance the huge power of the legislature and the factions that may gain control of it."
Critics say the framers were concerned about the unchecked power of a king, who could act without regard to elected representatives. "Some people would argue that the whole point of the Revolution was not to have a king," says Michael Froomkin, a law professor at the University of Miami.
