Charlie Savage has won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for national reporting. Here's the citation from Pulitzer.org:
Awarded to Charlie Savage of The Boston Globe for his revelations that President Bush often used "signing statements" to assert his controversial right to bypass provisions of new laws.
It is a measure of the importance of Savage's work that you probably, by now, consider the whole "signing statements" issue common knowledge.
I'm proud to have linked to Savage's work a couple of times last year, in March and October. The October piece is part of the work for which Savage won the award.
Here's a nice line uttered by his editor at the newsroom champagne toast. I'd like to tattoo it on the back of every Washington reporter's hand:
… the reason he won this richly deserved Pulitzer is because he covered what the White House does, not just what it says …
The above was brought to my attention by Glenn Greenwald, who has an excellent post covering Savage's award. Go read the whole thing.
To understand why this is recognition is so noteworthy to me, to Greenwald, and hopefully, to many others, you might first look at the curiously resonant cartoon by Tom Tomorrow.
Update
2007-04-18 11:16 EDT
You can hear a rebroadcast of a May 2006 interview with Savage on Fresh Air's site. The interview is quite good.
2 comments:
Signing statements seem legally vacuous. The President cannot modify a law, and the legality of selectively enforcing the law is unaffected by whether he keeps that decision secret or announces his intention in a signing statement. If he's going to refuse to enforce the law, what's the point of bragging about it? Just impeach him and be done with it.
Laws should also not be severable. Legislation is horse-traded into existence: a bridge to nowhere for gay marriage. If gay marriage is later ruled unconstitutional, the bridge has to come down.
It's only fair.
I agree with your assessment, Dan. How are signing statements different from a line item veto, at best, and flagrant disregard for the law, at worst?
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