Always Welcome News

There are certain things guaranteed to make me happy: my daughter's smile, late-afternoon light along the Pacific Coast, apple-pear-cranberry pie, the feeling you get entering an air-conditioned Smithsonian museum, reading poetry in German, a Cal Bears victory, and a new release from one of of my favorite bands. When that new release is from a band that has long since broken up, though, the delight is tinged with sadness. I'll take it, though. And since I'm one of the few people out there who will confess to having Wowee Zowee as my favorite Pavement album in its original state -- the reissue of Slanted and Enchanted trumps it -- I'm especially excited that it's going to be getting the expanded treatment: "Doctor's leaving for the holiday season. . ."

This Could Get Interesting

I've given up the search for a silver lining in the clouds that keep piling up on our nation's political horizon. Sometime soon it's going to rain. And we're bound to get some flash flooding in the process, washing away as many people on the Left as the Right and perhaps more. But the news is not without its surprises. Checking the headlines just now, I did a double-take when I read "Congress To Sue President?":

A powerful Republican committee chairman who has led the fight against President Bush's signing statements said Monday he would have a bill ready by the end of the week allowing Congress to sue him in federal court.

"We will submit legislation to the United States Senate which will...authorize the Congress to undertake judicial review of those signing statements with the view to having the president's acts declared unconstitutional," Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., said on the Senate floor.

Specter's announcement came the same day that an American Bar Association task force concluded that by attaching conditions to legislation, the president has sidestepped his constitutional duty to either sign a bill, veto it, or take no action.

Many legal experts have been asking pointed questions about the signing statements Bush so frequently attaches to the legislation he signs -- he has already done so more than all other Presidents combined -- but the ante has definitely been upped when a Senator of Specter's standing takes this step. For all I know, it may mean that Pennsylvania moderate's political downfall. But his risky move -- you can imagine the fury the right-wing talk show hosts will offer in response -- at least holds the promise of livening up the domestic political landscape over the coming months.