In effect, doesn't the President already have line item veto? If there are items he doesn't agree with, he should signal that he will veto until they are removed.
That requires a lot from the President and oftentimes they'll be on the losing end of that political battle. On the recently-passed NDAA for example (which explicitly made it legal to detain people without trial, and hopefully will be struck down by the courts), it was passed as part of funding the military, sending out soldier paychecks, etc. Fox News is already (wrongly) accusing Obama of wanting to undermine our troops all the time, and people are already sick of pointless squabbling over routine funding matters in DC. Obama would have been the political loser from vetoing the bill, the Republicans would have known it, and they probably would have just kept passing the bill and forcing him to veto it until he caved.
Obama originally objected to the NDAA because it limited his powers too much, not because of the indefinite detention clause.
The Administration strongly objects to the military custody provision of section 1032, which
would appear to mandate military custody for a certain class of terrorism suspects. This
unnecessary, untested, and legally controversial restriction of the President's authority to defend
the Nation from terrorist threats would tie the hands of our intelligence and law enforcement
professionals. Moreover, applying this military custody requirement to individuals inside the
United States, as some Members of Congress have suggested is their intention, would raise
serious and unsettled legal questions and would be inconsistent with the fundamental American
principle that our military does not patrol our streets. We have spent ten years since September
11, 2001, breaking down the walls between intelligence, military, and law enforcement
professionals; Congress should not now rebuild those walls and unnecessarily make the job of
preventing terrorist attacks more difficult. Specifically, the provision would limit the flexibility
of our national security professionals to choose, based on the evidence and the facts and
circumstances of each case, which tool for incapacitating dangerous terrorists best serves our
national security interests. The waiver provision fails to address these concerns, particularly in
time-sensitive operations in which law enforcement personnel have traditionally played the
leading role. These problems are all the more acute because the section defines the category of
individuals who would be subject to mandatory military custody by substituting new and
untested legislative criteria for the criteria the Executive and Judicial branches are currently
using for detention under the AUMF in both habeas litigation and military operations. Such
confusion threatens our ability to act swiftly and decisively to capture, detain, and interrogate
terrorism suspects, and could disrupt the collection of vital intelligence about threats to the
American people.
What? Break it down for me here, in what way is he arguing for more quote "powers"? The power to not indefinitely detain people? That's a really brutal one, favorite of dictators everywhere. I shudder at the thought of someday being not-detained.
I mean, I really don't want to carry Obama's water on this one given that he did sign the bill, but you're just engaged in some sort of silly deliberate misinterpretation of the paragraph you quoted.
My understanding, and I could be wrong, is that the military detention provision would stop the rendition program because "terrorists" would be in military custody instead of allowing the flexibility that they currently have:
"Specifically, the provision would limit the flexibility of our national security professionals to choose, based on the evidence and the facts and circumstances of each case, which tool for incapacitating dangerous terrorists best serves our national security interests. "
I think this entire law is bad, but I'd prefer a well defined bad law than one that allows lots of discretion.
