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I see. So you would rather he voted the bill and it went back to congress and continued to be an issue until there was a democrat in the oval office who will sign it.

I would rather he vetoed the bill, stated in plain enough language the reasoning as to why this bill deserved to be vetoed (and it did deserve a veto), and gone from there to make it plain and true that the burden of justifying to the American people why they saw fit to write and at long last pass a plainly unconstitutional abridgement of freedom of speech belonged to Congress. With Mr. Bush's political capital (reality check: he has, at this writing anyway, the sort of public approval ratings even Ronald Reagan couldn't have claimed), it should have been all but a no-brainer. (On the assumption that Congress might not have had the votes to override a veto in this case, I shall keep to myself for now any supposition as to why there might be the assumption that the next President, God help us if so, would be a Damnocrat.)

Of course, at that time it would STILL go to SCOTUS to determine whether or not it was constitutional.

Assuming, of course, that Mr. Bush had shown some kidney and vetoed the bill, and that Congress from there had the votes to override the veto. My previous commentary stands: the Supreme Court is not and ought never to be seen as the first authority on the Constitutionality of a given law.

Oh yeah, I forgot, you don't really care about reality, you'd prefer that have McCain's face on all the Sunday morning shows for the next umpteen years...

And you think McVain hasn't won a huge victory now? Reality check: Mr. Bush's signing this bill means John McVain gets to play Roger Enrico to Mr. Bush's Coca-Cola and crow, accordingly, the other guy just blinked!, when the occasion arises, and you know as well as I that he will seize those occasions when they do arise, as surely they will on the coming campaign trails. Had Mr. Bush vetoed the bill, the proper enough way to have dealt with McVain would be to let him rant his goddamned head off, because a) he would, indeed, do it anyway, but b) make it clear that it then becomes his burden, and not Mr. Bush's, to justify his stance and actions.

...and you'd prefer to have congress tied in knots while trying to muster 67 votes, and you'd MUCH rather have the media claiming Bush is tainted by "BIG MONEY" like Enron and that's why he voted the bill.

Gee, whiz.

I had not realised it would be such an unconscionable burden upon us to have Congress tied up in knots trying to muster an override. (Considering the mischief government makes when it is making law - I am to the point where I will vote for no candidate who does not stand for repealing more than making law - I should think we and the Constitution are safer if and when Congress is tied up in knots like this.)

And I had not realised previously that it was that far beyond Mr. Bush's powers of communication and enunciation to state plain and simple that - having vetoed this bill on very solid Constitutional grounds (please, have we forgotten that the media gets a huge break with this bill?), if he had vetoed it - anyone who even thinks of trying to claim he vetoed the bill out of any "big money" taint (have we forgotten that, when Enron came schnorring around the White House for favour when the proverbial sh@t hit the proverbial fan, the Bush people told them to take a proverbial hike, post haste?) or beholdenness, is talking through his or her chapeau.

Sorry, I'd rather SCOTUS drove the stake through the heart of CFR and had it declared dead once and for all.

I assure you, I do not seek to deny the Supreme Court its right to earn its keep when I say that the Congress which writes the law and the President who signs or vetoes a law have a mandate to know well enough whether what they are writing or signing is Constitutionally permissible. Once more, with feeling: The courts, Supreme or otherwise, do not own the Constitution of the United States.

BTW, the duties of the president are much more then either signing or vetoing bills. Regardless of how you interpret the constitution, this is NOT a monarchy.

Since the question at hand involves purely the President's power to sign or veto prospective law, it is the height of condescension to presume I know nothing of the President's other duties. Rest assured, I need lectures on the range of duties of the President about as profoundly as the Incredible Hulk needs anabolic steroids. Since when is it unacceptable, when considering a piece of legislation arriving at the President's desk, to concentrate on his power to sign or veto said legislation?

I have interpreted the Constitution in no such fashion as to suggest I believe the United States of America to be a monarchy. Nor do I believe in Presidential fiat. (If nothing else, we surely had an unconscionable ton of it during the Clintonista era.) To hold that the Congress should not have composed and the President should not have signed a piece of legislation that is profoundly unconstitutional - indeed, to hold that neither branch has any legitimate business in composing and/or signing a plainly unconstitutional piece of legislation - is not to say anything that can be construed as a predilection toward monarchy which I simply do not hold.

And none of the foregoing is to say that I wish now for anything other than the Supreme Court to shoot this abomination down as it deserves. But it should not have had to come to that point. Which raises a point I made elsewhere on this matter: if indeed this entire farce is being played out in order that various and sundry politicoes (including the President, perhaps) can claim to the "right" constituencies that they stood on the side of the alleged angels, while leaving the real dirty work of burying this monster to the Supreme Court, it would be - as the Orange County Register, for one, pointed forth a few days ago - the most grotesque of political cynicism.