I am getting some feedback about not being sensible enough to deal with what Nina Easton must have meant rather than what she said. Maybe I’m just being dense — I really don’t mean to be. Here’s one reader:

… I don’t want to be on the side of “liberal journalists,” but the quote [Andy] has from Nina Easton makes perfect sense. In the scenario she outlines, Bush doesn’t bother vetoing the bill because he doesn’t believe it has any force. He just ignores it and continues directing the war. The issue then “ends up in the courts” because some groups from the left put together a lawsuit over Bush ignoring the bill. Andy does himself no favors by snidely quoting chapter and verse from the Constitution. If he’d had the decency to think about what Nina was saying, instead of jumping on a chance to play gotcha like a schoolboy, he’d have realized there was nothing unreasonable in her position.

I’m sorry, but I’m just not getting this. When unconstitutional or just plain bad bills come before a president, his job is to veto them — like Nixon did with the War Powers Resolution (a veto congress overrode) and like Bush should have done with Campaign Finance Reform. Ignoring such bills doesn’t do him any good, because ignoring them is apt to turn them into laws.

If Ms. Easton meant to suggest a scenario in which Bush doesn’t veto the bill, it becomes a law because Congress is still in session, and then he continues to ignore it, I confess that I missed that — perhaps because it seems so far-fetched to me. It’s not clear from what she said, but these are the perils of live-TV — I actually don’t think there’s anything dumb about Ms. Easton and I’ve misspoken plenty of times too, so maybe I should have cut her more slack.

But even the unlikely scenario she may have been conjuring wouldn’t mean the courts end up deciding. Several members of congress tried to sue Clinton when he (correctly, in my view) ignored provisions of the War Powers Resolution while using force in the Balkans. The courts, quite properly, declined to hear the case. A fight between the president and congress over war powers is a political question. It is not one fit for decision by the courts, nor one as to which the courts can speak authoritatively to the other branches.

But you only get to this goofy scenario if Bush fails to veto a Murtha Plan bill. Why would he do that? (I am assuming there would not be enough votes to override a veto — indeed, I seriously doubt enough Republicans would break ranks in the senate that the senate would pass the Murtha plan to begin with, so Bush is unlikely to be in the position of having to sign or veto it.)

Another reader suggests that Bush might sign a bill containing the Murtha Plan because it gets attached to something else he wants. In this scenario, the president issues a signing statement saying he intends to ignore the Murtha Plan provisions because they are unconstitutional. I suppose that is possible (and, for the reasons already explained, I don’t think that means the courts decide). But it seems highly, highly unlikely to me.

Bush and the Republicans who have argued against the non-binding resolution have been very strong on how bad this is for our troops in the field. The Murtha Plan would be much worse. So I believe Bush would have to veto it. A signing statement has no legal force, and Bush would be bitterly criticized, and properly so, for allowing Murtha Plan provisions to become law.