Strange Political Bedfellows

 I highly recommend reading the article entitled, “Congress tries again to hand the president a line-item veto” written by Ben Pershing and published on January 30 in The Washington Post. It is a very informative article that focuses on the recent Expedited Line-Item Veto and Rescissions Act of 2011 and how Congress plans to, once more, try to grant the President “Line-Item Veto” power. What that entails is that instead of the normal presidential up or down veto of a bill, the President would have the power to “line out” or cut only certain parts of the bill. (Though under the proposed bill, the President would only have that power for budget bills.) This article offers backstory to the attempts that Congress has made in the past to grant presidents the line-item veto including the Clinton v. City of New York Supreme Court case that threw out the last attempt to grant the line-item veto in 1996. This article is a must read, (You will find the politically-motivated, bipartisan alliance forming around this issue very interesting!)