Hearing vowed on Bush's powers: Senator questions bypassing of laws. Charlie Savage's excellent work for the Globe is reverberating on Capitol Hill.

WASHINGTON -- The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, accusing the White House of a ''very blatant encroachment" on congressional authority, said yesterday he will hold an oversight hearing into President Bush's assertion that he has the power to bypass more than 750 laws enacted over the past five years.

''There is some need for some oversight by Congress to assert its authority here," Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania, said in an interview. ''What's the point of having a statute if . . . the president can cherry-pick what he likes and what he doesn't like?"

Specter said he plans to hold the hearing in June. He said he intends to call administration officials to explain and defend the president's claims of authority, as well to invite constitutional scholars to testify on whether Bush has overstepped the boundaries of his power....

...Over the past five years, Bush has stated that he can defy any statute that conflicts with his interpretation of the Constitution. In many instances, Bush cited his role as head of the executive branch or as commander in chief to justify the exemption.

Bush made the claims in ''signing statements," official documents in which a president lays out his interpretation of a bill for the executive branch, creating guidelines to follow when it implements the law. The statements are filed without fanfare in the federal record, often following ceremonies in which the president made no mention of the objections he was about to raise in the bill, even as he signed it into law...

...Specter added: ''He put a signing statement on the Patriot Act. He put a signing statement on the torture issue. It's a very blatant encroachment on [Congress's constitutional] powers. If he doesn't like the bill, let him veto it."...

...''We're undergoing a tsunami here with the flood coming from the executive branch on one side and the judicial branch on the other," Specter said. ''There may as well soon not be a Congress. . . . And I think that most members don't understand what's happening."

"Signing statements" seem like a sneaky way to veto a bill without facing political consequences or risking a possible "veto of the veto" if two-thirds of both houses of Congress vote to override it. Any president's use of such a loophole to expand the power of the Executive Branch would horrify the founders of this nation, who so feared putting too much power in the hands of any one branch that they devised a careful system of mutual checks and balances on the president, the courts, judiciary. Congress must not be winked out of this process.

Regardless of where your political loyalties lie, an insistence that the President abide by the separation of powers built into the Constitution is a profoundly patriotic stance.

If nothing else, Specter's hearing will be a refresher course in the Constitution for all of us.

3:39 a.m.
From Singapore's BigO rock magazine (the name is an acronym for "Before I Get Old"), this week's Recording of Indeterminate Origin is A Coltrane Serenade by the The Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, Alice Tully Hall, New York, August 9, 1991:

To celebrate John Coltrane, the "house band" of Todd Williams, Wynton Marsalis, Marcus Roberts, Christian McBride, Billy Higgins and Wes Andersen are supplemented by guests Joe Henderson, McCoy Tyner and Roy Haynes.

This is a very comfortable way to get into Coltrane as the music here are among his most accessible. Dear Lord is taken at a lounge-y pace, with enough soloing to make this jazz. Coltrane’s explosive, experiential side is gently avoided. The final track Mr Symes is a sweet ballad....

... (these are high quality, stereo MP3s - sample rate of 192 kibit/s). As far as we can ascertain none of the tracks have been officially released.

Also downloadable, David Murray Octet Plays Trane, live at Chicago Jazz Festival, Grant Park, Chicago, IL, September 1, 2000.