Bills entered into the system in the middle of the night for voting the next morning, pro forma sessions , fly by earmarks pick your additions. Tell me that is a congress offering legislation designed to stand on it’s merits.

Nope I have been saying for months this congress is INTENTIONALLY TRYING to look like a do nothing congress.

During the last week of their session it became clear watching Cspan due to all the important bills being debated.

Talking points repeated over and over during the debates and showing up on left side blogs at the same time.

It’s the obstructionist republicans
It’s the veto happy president
We need veto proof majorities in both houses
We need a dem in the White House

Actual testimony during the debates over and over.

They willing to accomplish little if nothing more than mandatory funding bills just to whip their base into a frenzy to provide them the seats to ensure their power structure. Waste a year to achieve longer term objectives.

Now the question is was their base fooled enough to buy it or are the hacked off because they wasted time in just political gamesmanship?

Their low poll numbers give us hints. The rejection is a combination of moderates upset with their games and lack of legislation.
The anti-war socialist leaning left upset with no pullout and lack of legislation (but a whole different focus from moderate dems).

Also, as far as I’ve heard this is a pocket veto. Not a true veto.

Last I checked, both the House and the Senate had to have a quorum (50% of membership) in order to conduct business. So could this mean that over the weekend, we could see 218 House members and 51 Senators come in to override Bush’s veto? After all, you only have to have 2/3 of the quorum to override a veto, not 2/3 of total membership of each House of Congress.

why didn’t the White House, which was aware of the legislation’s progress as it passed, say something sooner?

They did:

Bush aides said they had signaled concern about the controversial provision for weeks, although there had been no formal veto threat. They said their concern grew urgent recently after a legal review and feedback from U.S. diplomats in Iraq and Iraqi leaders.

As the AP noted, “sovereign nations are normally immune from lawsuits in U.S. courts. An exception is made for state sponsors of terrorism and Iraq was designated such a nation in 1990. After the 2003 invasion of Iraq, however, Congress passed a law and Bush issued a decree stating that Iraq was exempt from such lawsuits.”

So, what’s the problem here?