Keeping the Barriers Up

There's not much that the cretin in chief can do that surprises me, it would take his turning into a decent law-abiding citizen really to be a surprise. Today, though, I ran into another kink in that rotten waste of good air that I hadn't known about. If a bill passes that prohibits discrimination against gays, he's promised to veto it. In anticipation of that, the measure has been contained as an amendment to the war funding, something the sponsors are sure will be veto-proof.

Earlier this year, Sens. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Gordon Smith (R-Ore.), the two lead sponsors of the Senate hate crimes bill, decided to offer the bill as an amendment to the defense measure as a safeguard against a possible veto by President Bush.

The White House announced in May that the president was strongly considering vetoing the hate crimes bill on grounds that state and local law enforcement agencies should prosecute hate crimes and the federal government should not become involved in such prosecutions. The announcement came one day before the House voted 237-180 on May 3 to approve a version of the hate crimes bill identical to the one before the Senate.

Reid removed the defense bill from the Senate floor after Republican senators staged a filibuster to kill a separate amendment to the bill backed by Democrats that called for withdrawing U.S. combat troops from Iraq by May 1.
(snip)
Georgetown University government professor Clyde Wilcox, author of the book “Politics of Gay Rights,” said he expects the Senate to pass the defense authorization bill sometime this year based on precedent. When that happens, he said, there would be enormous pressure on the president to sign the bill, even if it has a hate crimes amendment attached to it.

There really isn't any indecency that the present resident of the White House avoids, but using a veto to prevent fair treatment of citizens is about as nasty as I can imagine. That veto is suddenly getting a lot of action. If anybody plans to make this country a better place, you're going to get vetoed. Has Yale apologized yet for letting him loose?