foot.

Where is the news media on this?  Perhaps McCains second favorite reason why people should elect him (did you know he was a POW?) is that, the first time a spending bill comes across his desk with pork, he will take out his veto pen, he will make them famous, and you will know their names.

Except that he won't, and he just showed that in voting for the pork-stuffed bailout/rescue plan.  Each member of Congress has, in effect, the exact same choice with respect to each piece of legislation that comes for a floor vote as the president:  vote up or vote down.  Congress tried once to give the President the opportunity to veto specific line items in spending legislation, but the Supreme Court struck it down (at the behest of Rudi G.) in Clinton v. City of New York, 524 U.S. 417 (1998).  (During a primary debate, McCain promised to bring back the line item veto.  Then someone on a major news station pointed out that it was stuck down as unconstitutional, and he hasn't brought it up again.)  Thus, under the Presentment Clause, a President can either sign the bill -- as hammered out by Congress -- into law, or kill it.  There is no third option.

And that's why McCain's vote on Wednesday is so telling.  The bill was full of pork (by his own admission), and he voted yes.  Why?  Because, according to McCain, there were bigger issues at stake in this legislation.

But that is precisely why presidents sign into law bills with ear marks and other provisions they don't like.  And there is no reason to think McCain will reach a different conclusion when faced with a similar choice in the White House.  So the next time he pulls out his sharpie (as if any president has ever signed or vetoed any law with a sharpie -- wouldn't it run through?), I really hope someone is there to call bull-hockey-mom on that pledge.

I'd like to address how it utterly horrifies me that Palin hasn't heard of Marbury or Brown or Bush v. Gore or Dred Scott or Plessy or Miranda or Giddeon (holy cow Batman!  Where they hell was she in middle school history?).  But I'll do that later.  Now, I want to grind an axe about people who say "Roe v. Wade should be overruled," and in particular politicians who run on that platform  So here's a message to Sarah Palin, and all politicians who think overruling Roe v.  Wade needs to be a top priority:

Roe v.  Wade was overruled in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833 (1992).   That's right, it hasn't been the law since 1992.  The last year of the George H. W. Bush Administration.  Same year as the Rodney King trial -- the first one. 

I'm actually surprised you didn't know that, because Justice Scalia, who you adore, made a big stink about it.  You see, the controlling plurality (it's complicated, just trust me that three Justices controlled the outcome) replaced the trimester test in Roe with a new "undue burden" test.  And in so doing, the plurality relied heavily the principle of stare decisis (that is, the precidential weight accorded prior rulings).  And your favorite Justice -- Scalia -- opened up a can on them for doing so, asserting that their hypocrisy was "really more than one should have to bear. "  See 505 U.S. at 985 (Scalia, J., dissenting).

So, what's the point?  That I have a law degree?  No.  I do.  And I'm not apologizing for that.  But that's not the point. 

The point, is that if you are going to use an issue as a wedge in the national political discourse, you ought to have at least a rudimentary understanding of it.  But you don't.  Instead, you're focusing on a decision that has not been law since the Dream Team stormed Barcelona.  Attack the undue burden test if you want.  Lord knows there is plenty to attack there.  (Indeed, given the Court's current composition, the undue burden test's squishy nature gives pro-life advocacy groups a huge opportunity to render the right to abortion a right in name only -- if it isn't already.)  But please, for the love of god, learn something about the law in this area before you run on a platform of changing it.

Regards,

eze