Override Fails

Well the vote to override the veto failed as all expected. The purpose of the vote was only to put Republicans on the record on this issue. I was hardly going to comment on the vote, however one sentence in the WaPo article stood out for me.

The bill he refused to sign yesterday would have required the administration to begin the "phased redeployment" of U.S. troops out of Iraq no later than Oct. 1, with a goal of removing all combat forces by April 1, 2008, except those carrying out security, training and counterterrorism missions.

The highlighted part of the paragraph is what struck me. Now this has nothing to do with the appropriations bill itself, or Democratic strategy or the Iraq War. For that read Kos, or Digby or MyDD. The thing about that highlighted part is what it says about ability of today's press to actually report anything. A journalist reporting on the fate of a bill passed by the United States Congress ought to have at least a basic understanding of the American legislative process. The issue was not that Bush refused to sign it. If he had only refused to sign it, it would have become law on May 8. The President's signature is not needed for a bill to become law. It just isn't. The President did not refuse to sign the bill, he vetoed it. He sent it back to the Chamber in which it originated with his objections to the bill for it to be debated again and voted on again. That is different from refusing to sign. It may seem a minor point, but we should expect that reporters for the major daily newspaper of the nation's capital will at least get the minor points right. What I am describing is not a new feature of the Constitution. Our reporters should be familiar with the document.