The president's gotta respect the West Coast, homes.

oh man, you break my heart. the whole time reading it i was all, "finally! someone else who foolishly watched xXx 2!" and then at the end you're all like, "bitch-slap, michele, you're a loser."

through the pain of my smarting cheek i must give you kudos none the less. that is a strikingly compelling comparison.

Outstanding.

Did the President actually suggest bringing back the line item veto? That's unconstitutional! Did he follow it up by saying, "You hear that Sam? John? I'm talking to you guys, here."?

Bravo!

Favorite "Interruptions by applause"

digg it

Yes, he really asked for the line-item veto. He snuck it in in a section on budget reform:

"I am pleased that members of Congress are working on earmark reform, because the federal budget has too many special interest projects. (Applause.) And we can tackle this problem together, if you pass the line-item veto. (Applause.)

"We must also confront the larger challenge of mandatory spending, or entitlements."

Nice. It's not quite "The West Wing," is it?

Stellar as usual, Sean. The Alito/Xzibit juxtaposition is my favorite.

Incredibly amusing... the line-item veto, however, is not amusing at all. I think Bush has made enough ill-considered, probably-unconstitutional decisions during his reign to bring in the totally unconstitutional ability to hijack the legislative process whenever he wants - "legally"!

Constitutional considerations aside, I'm curious about everybody's strong feelings against the line-item veto. Only because I've been trying to think of the cons and none are immediately popping into my head. Well, I guess maybe Bush could undermine compromises in Congress by flicking off stuff that balances out other, not-so-great stuff in the bill. But I guess to me it sounded like a neat idea in the long term, post-Bush, when a more moderate president could use it to trim ridiculous ear-marks. Did it not do that successfully under Clinton? (That's not rhetorical, I'm curious). Though I guess maybe it could destroy any willingness at all to compromise in Congress, since quid pro quo would lose the quid as soon as it gets to the White House. I guess I should just read the papers, but if there's something scarier I'm not thinking about, I'd rather hear it from a friend first.

I think you've already got the idea. It subverts the already overly complicated and politicized process anything has to go through to get passed by Congress, possibly making the party is not represented by the President more wary of making any compromises. Just because we don't trust Bush and trusted Clinton (or would trust some hypothetical future moderate President), doesn't seem to make the idea any better. If Clinton had been able to use the (arguably sensible) Line Item Veto Act to cancel 1) any dollar amount of discretionary budget authority, 2) any item of new direct spending, or 3) any limited tax benefit that would i) reduce the Federal budget deficit, ii) not impair any essential Gov't functions, and iii) not harm the national interest, I have no doubt that he would have used it wisely to cut out things reasonable people would agree is total pork. However, in the hands of a less socially-conscious slave to conservative moral philosophy that's just plain scary because he'd be able to veto a mind boggling amount of social and health care spending that didn't fit his conservative, "security"-focused, supply-side economic agenda.

Well put, Kristina. Given the long list of, shall we say, questionable extensions of executive power that Bush has already implemented, it's troubling that he would casually propose another extension that has already been declared unconstitutional. The fact that he did it just as a new Supreme Court Justice was sworn in is revolting.

So social and health care spending proposals and the like can still get to the President's desk as part of larger, not uniformly wonderful bills, and could even be signed into law if the President likes the other stuff enough to not kill the whole thing. That makes sense. I'm also wondering, though, if another concern might be the possibility of a complete standstill in Congress, where nothing gets to the President's desk. What do you guys think?

And please keep in mind that I'm only putting the constitutional considerations aside to learn more about the line-item veto and its potential consequences, good and bad, since the fact that something is not allowed doesn't seem to stop it from happening these days.

In the words of Darius "XXX" Stone, "Tonight the fate of the free world is in the hands of a bunch of hustlers and thieves."

Though, as Agent Kyle Steele points out, "Why should tonight be any different?"

I think, as a practical matter, the line-item veto probably wouldn't be used to get rid of all pork-barrel spending. It'd be used to get rid of pork-barrel spending by members of the party that's not the President's. I would argue that this is worse than what we have now; it would further entrench the party in power, and they would likely end up expanding their own earmarks to fill the void left by the veto of the opposition's earmarks.

Also, from a partisan political perspective, the line-item veto is structurally good for Republicans and bad for Democrats. It gives the President an immense amount of power to reduce the budget, but no power to raise it. Now, it would be interesting if the line-item veto also let the president strike provisions out of tax cuts...

how do you know so much of the movie since you haven't even seen it?!?!

man, i wish i was good friends with the director of xXx2 like i am with john hazlett.

If you were a prostitute or an undercover LA police officer, you could become quite close with xXx2's director.

i could be a prostitute. someone pay me for sex.

As the Dude would say, Uh, I'm just gonna go find a cash machine.

yeah, so kristen can bash your head in.

are you having dinner with us tonight? it's going to be tasty. french pizzas, salads, bread and i'm making cookies now for dessert. molasses cookies. mmmm, covered in sugar.