Why ANYONE would be optimistic about the Supreme Court denying Bush's claim of executive privilege is beyond me. Their last round of rulings made it abundundantly clear that they're perfectly willing to throw precedent right out the window. It's no secret Alito is a strong advocate of a "unitary executive", Roberts' deference to presidential power has been obvious throughout his career, Scalia has been trying to expand presidential power for years and Thomas actually cited "unitary executive" in arguing in 2004 that the Supreme Court had no right to intervene in granting legal protections to detainees at Guantanamo Bay. Kennedy may not be as reliably conservative as the other four but he did draft the opinion that handed the White House to Bush in 2000 so I doubt that he could be counted on to deny Bush his "executive privilege". In short, I most definitely think the White House could win a constitutional showdown with Congress. The only question that remains is whether or not he wants the kind of publicity that such a fight would engender.

Smokers paying an extra $6.90 for a carton of cigarettes is a "reasonable compromise"? If Congress decided to more than double the tax on gasoline you'd all be cheering Bush's threatened veto but, what the hell, smokers have become the scum of the earth so let them fund health insurance for kids. Next let's send them to Iraq ... that'll cure them of their dirty, nasty habit once and for all. Then we'll go after those elitist cigar smokers.

If this is so important, why isn't the cost being distributed amongst ALL taxpayers instead of just to cigarette smokers?

Thanks for informing me that this IS a reasonable compromise AND explaining the notion of sin taxes, all in terms that even a moron could understand. And even though I've been smoking and drinking and paying sin taxes for about 40 years now, I even did as you instructed and read the Committee's release and all I could find relative to my comments was the following:

Congress decided at CHIP’s creation in 1997 that taxes on tobacco products were an appropriate offset for a program intended to improve the health of low-income children across the country, and the Senators chose to follow that precedent in the renewal this year. The investment in the Children’s Health Insurance Program is paid for with a 61-cent increase in Federal tax on cigarettes, with proportional increases for other tobacco products.

Funny, I just can't seem to find much evidence of give-and-take and concessions in those two sentences but that's just MY definition of reasonable compromise.

By the way, I should have thought it was pretty obvious that I object to sin taxes but I guess I was too subtle for you.

"I’m always happy to explain things in terms even a moron could understand. But apparently, I was not clear enough."

Au contraire, your original comment was very clear (and very patronizing too, I might add). What a shame that you completely missed the point of my post ... some might call that moronic.

And, no, the reasonable compromise I'm looking for has less to do with compromises between smokers and senators and more to do with funding critical programs like this with something a little more substantial than a "sin tax" and flimsy, hypocritical justifications about how it will force people to quit smoking. (Because if everybody quits smoking then you'd have no money to fund this program, would you.) These senators took the easy way out with their decision to more than double the tax on a pack of cigarettes instead of looking for more permanent and consistent funding.

"But the Bush administration announced last week that, in its view, the U.S. Attorney is not obligated to pursue potential charges; indeed, the administration has said it will not even allow the U.S. Attorney to do so. Many legal scholars -- Democrats as well as Republicans -- seem to agree that the administration has that power."

So we have three branches of government that are supposed to provides a series of checks and balances on one another but because the Department of Justice is part of the Executive Branch it can prevent the Legislative Branch from fulfilling its Constitutional duty. Presumably, preventing the U.S. Attorney from pursuing this would also preclude this particular invocation of executive privilege from being decided on by the courts. How can the administration have this power when it's clearly shielding itself from oversight not just by the Legislative Branch but by the Judicial Branch as well?? I thought all of these clowns took an oath of office to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States", not IGNORE IT.

Once again, Specter milks every bit of publicity he possibly can out of another of his "courageous" stands against the White House and then quietly tucks his balls into his boxers and backs down on every point. He may not be running the show any more but it still needs to be reported that he's still nothing but a showboater ... all mouth and no substance. That he would agree to Miers and Bolten testifying in private with no oath and no transcript is just more proof that he's still nothing more than Bush's lapdog. Calling him a "moderate" is an insult to moderates everywhere.