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Ah, I see, so you don't buy that whole "seperation of powers" thing that our forefathers meticulously wrote into the Constitution to make sure the legislative branch legislates, the executive branch executes, and the judicial branch determines the constitutionality of the laws?

I was unaware that the Constitutional prescription of the separation of powers denies the mandate - which is implied in the very oath of office by which they are bound to support the Supreme Law of The Land - of Congress which writes the laws and the President who signs or vetoes the laws to know good and goddam well whether what they are writing or signing passes Constitutional muster before they legislate. The courts, to borrow a locution from National Review editor Rich Lowry, do not own the Constitution.

What a shame you weren't around when the document was drafted, I'm sure the founding fathers would have welcomed your rather unique thoughts on where they went wrong.

You don't really believe the Founding Fathers would deny that a Congress charged to write laws and a President charged to either sign or veto said laws as he deems fit have a mandate against writing and/or signing unconstitutional legislation, do you?

Read the Constitution!

I have read the Constitution. I have this nasty habit of reading it at least once a week, a habit I have maintained since childhood. Among other things, said Constitution - the Supreme Law of the Land - says quite explicitly, Congress shall make no law...abridging freedom of speech. What part of that language escapes the comprehension of either Congress or the President? (And if it does escape their comprehension, should this not cause us alarm as to the elementary competence of the men and women we were thus fool enough to elect in the first place?)

But I have noticed as well that nowhere in Article III - which conjugates and enunciates the makeup and the mission of the Federal judiciary - is it granted that the Supreme Court is either the first or the sole court of determining the Constitutionality of laws. That grant of the Supreme Court being the final authority on the Constitutionality of the law arrived, if I recall correctly, by way of Mr. Chief Justice Marshall, writing for the Court in Marbury v. Madison.

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

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'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.

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

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.