Line-item veto

President Bush reiterated on Monday his call for the line-item veto. You'll recall that Bush mentioned the line-item veto in his State of the Union speech in January, leading many of us to ask, in the way that kids do these days, "WTF?!"

The Supreme Court ruled in in 1998 that the line-item veto -- the ability of a president to veto portions of legislation without vetoing the whole bill -- was unconstitutional, since it allowed the president to effectively rewrite legislation, giving him the powers of a legislator. The Constitution says that legislative authority is vested only in Congress and in no one else. Congress also does not have the authority to delegate its legislative responsibility to anyone else. Since Congress's powers are enumerated, Congress only has a power if the Constitution says it does. Omission does not constitute endorsement within the Constitution.

The line-item veto also violated another part of Article I of the Constitution, which specifies that the president may perform only two actions when presented with a bill: "sign it" into law or "return it" to the house of Congress that it came from. Again, the omission of a possible action does not constitute an implicit approval of that action.

Bush, though, insists that his new line-item veto proposal will pass the constitutional test (even though that's impossible, as the line-item veto itself is inherently unconstitutional). He also insists, however irrelevantly, that 43 state governors have line-item veto authority, which means that the U.S. president should have it, too.

High court says 'yes' to military recruiters

Monday was also the day when the Supreme Court ruled on the controversial Rumsfeld v. FAIR, chronicled in a previous entry. The Court unanimously decided that it was permissible for the federal government to deny certain higher educations funds to universities that didn't allow military recruiters the same access to campus it allowed to other kinds of recruiters.

While I had hoped that the Court would see the Solomon Amendment as a violation of freedom of expressive association, seven justices (Alito doesn't count because he didn't hear oral arguments in the case, and O'Connor doesn't count because she is no longer on the court) felt that there was no such issue. Chief Justice Roberts, writing the opinion, focused on the Solomon Amendment's requirement that universities offer equal access to both military and civilian recruiters: "Compelling a law school that sends e-mails for other recruiters to send one for a military recruiter is simply not the same as forcing a student to pledge allegiance to the flag." Thus the issue is not one of compelled speech, but of universities playing by their own rules.

The Court also rejects a comparison between this case and Boy Scouts of America v. Dale, which I -- wrongly, apparently -- said was similar to this case. If freedom of expressive association is discounted, then the conclusion reached in Dale is a moot point.

Also, seen from the point of view of the military, it is the university that is impacting the military's freedom of speech. The university provides resources for civilian recruiters (providing recruiters with access to receptions, including them in interviews), but not for military recruiters because it disagrees with the military's message. A public university, as an extention of Congress, cannot discriminate among speech it likes and speech it does not in providing equal access to resources.

South Dakota will probably challenge Roe

Now that Alito is on the Court, anti-abortion types are getting pumped for a challenge to Roe v. Wade. South Dakota's governor signed into law on Monday a bill outlawing abortions in South Dakota. The law is in flagrant violation of Roe, which is the point. Anti-abortionists are foaming at the mouth with hope that the law will be challenged in court, and will eventually arrive at the U.S. Supreme Court. Now, with Alito there, a possibility exists that Roe could be reversed and the Religious Right will have completed their transaction with George W. Bush: "Make me president, and I'll appoint justices who will overturn Roe v. Wade."

The South Dakota law makes an exception only to save the life of the mother, but makes abortion illegal in every other instance, including rape or incest.