Jacob Levy has a piece up at TNR Online arguing that opponents of unlimited executive power shouldn't forget that unlimited congressional power is pretty scary too. As a believer in both Youngstown and Lopez, I agree.

Meanwhile, a dutiful reader has dredged up a transcript of Senator Specter's remark that I mentioned below:

SPECTER: We're speaking not only to you, Judge Alito, but to the court. The court watches these proceedings. And I think they ought to know what the Congress thinks about making us schoolchildren or challenging our method of reasoning.

We're considering legislation which would give Congress standing to go into the Supreme Court to uphold our cases.

Right now the solicitor general does that. He's in the executive branch. We don't want to derogate the solicitor general in your presence, Judge Alito, but the thinking that we've had was to speak about your decisions and the court's decisions on the floor of the Senate. Nobody pays attention to that. Maybe we would try to come in as amicus. Why do that?

We have the power to grant standing. We could grant standing to ourselves and come into court and fight to uphold constitutionality.

Last night I decided to try my hand at ratatouille, and was somewhat surprised at the results--

The end result was good, one might argue (with a few modifications) very good, although there were some things that I had issue with: namely, the herbs and spices were thrown in at the end in nearly every recipe I looked at. I guess this isn't necessarily a bad thing, only--I suppose--a waste: the spices didn't really have a chance to infiltrate the vegetables, leaving vegetables coated with spice, not really seasoned with spice.

Is this right? Is that really how it's supposed to turn out?

O come, o come Waddling Thunder--

Just yesterday evening in my girlfriend's kitchen, I was arguing that Judge Alito has been remarkably willing to answer questions in his confirmation hearings so far, even if those answers have been sufficiently complicated, nuanced, or hedged that listeners haven't gotten the knock-down-drag-out fight they may have been hoping for. In a piece on TNR Online, Ethan Leib agrees.

I quibble, though, with Leib's take on conservatives and treaties. Leib writes:

. On the hot-button issue of whether Supreme Court justices should draw upon foreign law, Alito at first seemed to toe the conservative line, saying it would be inappropriate to consider foreign laws and foreign constitutions while interpreting our own.

But then he uttered a surprising remark--one that most conservatives probably didn't want to hear: He acknowledged that it might be appropriate to look at foreign legal sources to interpret treaties the United States has signed. "I don't see anything wrong with seeing the way the treaty has been interpreted in other countries," Alito said. "I wouldn't say that that's controlling, but it's something that is useful to look to." That's more foreign law than most Republicans are probably comfortable with. And it represents a concession, of sorts, to liberals, who would like to see international treaties enforced in America just as vigorously as they are enforced abroad.

Seconds ago, Senator Specter told Judge Alito that Congress was thinking about passing a law giving it standing to go into court to defend the constitutionality of its own laws passed. "We have the power to grant standing, and we can grant it to ourselves." (Rough quote).

Is it obvious, after Raines v. Byrd, that this is right?

Comments are Open-- I am hunting for a transcript of the exchange, otherwise I will transcribe one myself later.