EDITORIAL
A First Veto for This?
After six-plus years, the president finally finds his pen. Too bad it was for a good bill.
July 20, 2006
....On Wednesday, after the longest veto-free streak since Thomas Jefferson, Bush wiped the cobwebs from his veto pen and finally wielded a president's most potent legislative weapon....By rejecting a bill that would have lifted some federal restrictions on funding for stem cell research, Bush handed a political victory to social conservatives, widened a rift in the Republican Party and gave electoral ammunition to his Democratic opponents. Oh, and he also landed quite a blow against scientific progress and human health. At his first veto ceremony, Bush piously surrounded himself with children who were adopted while still embryos in fertility clinics. The kids were telegenic symbols of the potential embedded in each human embryo, but entirely disingenuous ones; the bill Bush rejected wouldn't have prevented a single one of them from being born.
Fertility clinics destroy thousands of embryos every year, byproducts of the in-vitro fertilization process. The bill would have allowed federal funding only for stem cell lines made from embryos that were destined for destruction, not adoption. No lives will be saved by the president's veto, but it's quite possible that many will be lost, victims of complications of diseases that embryonic stem cells could one day cure....
***
Disappointing as it is that Bush chose to use his first veto on this bill, at least he is finally using the constitutionally approved method of squashing bills. The presidential signing statement, formerly little more than a widely ignored news release, has under this administration become a sort of unofficial line-item veto, allowing the president to state publicly which parts of bills he intends to follow and which he will ignore. The Sarbanes-Oxley law, the USA Patriot Act and a measure by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) outlawing torture have been stamped with Bush's interpretations during signing statements, a disturbing seizure of executive branch power.
Now that Bush has shown that the ink cartridge hasn't dried up in his veto pen, he should use it more often. Next time, though, he should try not to use it to crush the hopes of millions of suffering Americans in order to please a radical special interest.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-veto20jul20,0,795954.story?coll=la-opinion-center 
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