AMY GOODMAN: Michael Greco, we have to break for 60 seconds. We'll be back with you. Michael Greco is President of the American Bar Association. Later, we'll be joined by Congressmember Dennis Kucinich. He's attempting to get into the Capitol building, but they're not letting him in, as he tries to make his way into the studio, into his own house, the House of the people. He says it's unclear why they're not letting the congressman in. Stay with us.

Our guest is the President of the American Bar Association, Michael Greco. The American Bar Association committee task force has come out with a report finding President Bush's signing statements undermine the separation of powers. You've given examples in the report of the kinds of bills that he has used the signing statement with. Can you give us a few?

MICHAEL GRECO: Well, the one I mentioned before the break, the torture amendment, which was of such importance to Congress and to the American people to say to the world, we don't torture people; if the President, after Congress has deliberated and enacted that law, announces in a signing statement that he doesn't intend to enforce that, that's a very serious matter.

Another example is that Congress enacted another law requiring the President to report to Congress any incidents in which the PATRIOT Act, the USA PATRIOT Act, was being misused, to report on the number of times that Americans have been spied on and other such information. He attached a signing statement to that bill, as well, saying that if he believes that enforcing that bill would interfere with his presidential powers, he will ignore it.

One thing should be pointed out. If the President believes that a law that Congress has enacted is unconstitutional or he has other problems with it, the Constitution provides him with an avenue: he can veto that bill. No one expects the President to enforce a law that he is uncomfortable with. But instead of vetoing these bills and sending it back to Congress so that Congress can deal with the President's concerns and either modify that bill to address those concerns or override the veto by a two-thirds vote, what the President is doing is denying Congress that power, given to it in the Constitution.

That's what we mean when we're talking about destroying the system of checks and balances, because recent presidents -- and it isn't just President Bush -- recent presidents have been taking, seizing more and more power from the other two branches to create a more powerful executive branch. The founders of this country separated those powers, precisely so that we would not have a monarch or a king or an all-powerful executive branch. That's how serious this issue is.

AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to Michael Greco, President of the American Bar Association. The Senate Judiciary Committee is holding a hearing today on modernizing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, FISA. Can you talk about the new FISA bill that's been proposed by Senator Arlen Specter?

MICHAEL GRECO: The American Bar Association issued a report from another task force that I appointed as ABA president back in January, and in that report, also from a bipartisan group of distinguished conservatives and liberals, that report was also unanimous. And in that report we urged that Congress not enact any legislation amending FISA until Congress knows what's going on.

Seven months after the New York Times disclosed the existence of the secret spying program, the administration still has not informed Congress, other than a couple of committees, some members of those committees, what this program is all about. So first and foremost, the ABA task force has said, “Do not take any action on any legislation until you, Congress, know what is involved.” How can you legitimize this program until you know what's in it? The Specter bill, unfortunately, to our view, legitimizes what's going on now without Congress or the American people knowing what's in that program, number one.

Number two, the ABA's position is there's no reason to do drastic surgery on FISA. That bill, enacted in 1978 to address abuses by the then administration of spying on Americans, has some very important safeguards in it. It requires that, before someone is spied on, that a warrant be gotten by the Justice Department or by the prosecution or the prosecutors. Any amendment to FISA -- and some of these bills, including the Specter bill and others, would eliminate that requirement of a warrant, and in doing that, damage, fatal damage, would be done to the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. And we can't afford to have one of our Bill of Rights so easily dismissed. The Fourth Amendment requires that there be a warrant issued and that there be probable cause existing before someone is spied on. Any bill that Congress enacts must continue to have those two Fourth Amendment protections.

In a nutshell, that's the ABA's position, and the Specter bill, as much as we admire and respect Senator Specter for bringing this to the forefront, we think that bill falls way short of the protections that the American people deserve to have under FISA and under the Fourth Amendment.