[sarasota]

It's not political, it's personal. The ads will not be lifted...and W knows they won't. Win/win.

[suzyq5558]

I think the President is perfect in calling for ALL ads to be stopped but he know s they will not and he cannot say a word about the SBV's or else the media would go into sleaze overdrive (like there not already).So he's doing fine by me.

[Reagan is King]

It's not political, it's personal. The ads will not be lifted...and W knows they won't. Win/win.

Yep. He called several days ago for the end of 527 ads so this is nothing new. He knows Kerry won't call off Moveon.org and he knows the Vets aren't going to stop (they've already said they wouldn't) so he looks like the good guy trying to calm things down while the Vets keep pounding Kerry. I agree, win/win.

The only bad thing about this article is the intentionally misleading headline. MSNBC is just blatantly supporting the Kerry side in every way possible. They're going to lose the last dozen or so viewers they have left.

[omni-scientist]

Don't the ads have to be stopped sometime next month in order to comply with the McCain-Feingold CFR law? (Naturally, this applies to MoveOn.org as well.)

[cicero's_son]

The ads will not be lifted...and W knows they won't. Win/win.

Hmm...sounds like what they said about Campaign Finance Reform. "It's unconstitutional, so go ahead and sign it. Win/win."

I certainly hope the Swifties don't back down, but it irritates me to see the president taking this line. What in world is wrong with a bunch of guys who put their lives on the line back in Vietnam availing themselves of the Free Speech they fought to protect?

[Revel]

I know the main reason Bush is doing this is for political reasons. I can understand him saying this in order to take the fuel from the Democratic argument. And yet Bush is the guy who signed the finance reform bill on this election stuff. The fact of the matter still remains that no one has the right to stop these adds under the American constitution. With out these kinds of adds then the American public has no way to side step the corruption in politics. We just become puppets in the audience. Only the candidates then have the power to decide what truths are going to come out about each other. That is not right. There is a kind of blackmail that goes on there. It is you don't tell on me about this and I won't tell on you about that...Kind of thing. The public deserves the truth...Period....a part from all of that. This bill which tries to squelch these adds is nothing more than protection for corruption. It is evil. And I am all for the swift vet adds. If they were a lie then they would be exposed as a lie. The American public will decide. And that is the way it should be. None of us should ever except that there is any good in the law that takes our (the people's) right to expose corruption away from us.

[IamConservative]

I wondered how the media would spin this. This more or less lets W off the hook. I might have encouraged him to explain a little more about CFR and how opponents opposed the legislation for this exact reason and how it relates to our rights of free speech.

The whole Edwards shtick about "not enough", "the one person that can stop it is W." That is so trial lawyer misdirection. Reality is W is the one person that can't do anything about it. It's against the law for him to collude with the 527's.

I soooo look forward to having leadership that looks at everything from a tort lawyers point of view.