Can’t get the President to agree with you the old-fashioned way?

Then sue him:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is threatening to take President Bush to court if he issues a signing statement as a way of sidestepping a carefully crafted compromise Iraq war spending bill.

Pelosi recently told a group of liberal bloggers, “We can take the president to court” if he issues a signing statement, according to Kid Oakland, a blogger who covered Pelosi’s remarks for the liberal website dailykos.com (Note: here’s a link to that piece –ST).

“The president has made excessive use of signing statements and Congress is considering ways to respond to this executive-branch overreaching” a spokesman for Pelosi, Nadeam Elshami, said. “Whether through the oversight or appropriations process or by enacting new legislation, the Democratic Congress will challenge the president’s non-enforcement of the laws.”

It is a scenario for which few lawmakers have planned. Indicating that he may consider attaching a signing statement to a future supplemental spending measure, Bush last week wrote in his veto message, “This legislation is unconstitutional because it purports to direct the conduct of operations of the war in a way that infringes upon the powers vested in the presidency.”

[…]

In the 1970s, congressional Democrats tried to get the courts to force President Nixon to stop bombing in Cambodia. The courts ruled that dissident lawmakers could not sue solely to obtain outcomes they could not secure in Congress.

In order to hear an argument, a federal court would have to grant what is known as “standing” meaning that lawmakers would have to show that Bush is willfully ignoring a bill Congress passed and that he signed into law.

The House would have to demonstrate what is called “injury in fact.” A court might accept the case if “it is clear that the legislature has exhausted its ability to do anything more” a former general counsel to the House of Representatives, Stanley Brand, said.

Lawmakers have tried to sue presidents in the past for taking what they consider to be illegal military action, but courts have rejected such suits.

And this is just one more way that the Democrats in Congress could delay the funding our military desperately needs.

It’s like they’re trying to fulfill their own predictions about Iraq turning into another Vietnam.

Despicable.

Speaking of funding, have you read about the Dems’ latest tricks on trying to get the President to sign the war supp? It’s called “short-term funding.” Of course, if the Dems had their way, the military would be on their way back home before they ever had the chance to make use of it.

Hat tip: Curt at Flopping Aces