Oh this is nice. While, um… “researching” that last article, I ran across a tidbit regarding an ethics reform bill in the Senate. While the House passed theirs 430-1 (Rep Dan Burton, R-IN, was the only one to oppose it), the Senate’s has been filibustered, but not for the reason you might think.

Republicans demanded that before the Senate vote on the reform measure, it consider a proposed amendment to permit a “line item veto,” which would allow a president to single out specific spending or tax provisions in bills approved by Congress and ask that lawmakers go back and delete them.

It would allow a president to single out all kinds of things in bills. In a poorly written article from about a year ago I tackled why the line-item veto should never come back, but it’s fairly simple.

Here’s the way the line-item veto works: Congress passes a bill, president vetoes a few items and sends it back for a vote again. If it doesn’t pass in its new form by a simple majority, it goes back in its original form, where it can be vetoed in the regular manner and need a 2/3 majority. This was voted 6-3 unconstitutional back in 1996 when Clinton held the power (before you read too much into that, both the very conservative Antonin Scalia and the more liberal Stephen Breyer dissented, as well as Sandra Day O’Conner) .

I agree with Reid’s response to the proposed amendment:

“Attaching an unrelated measure to this bipartisan bill is an obvious attempt to derail passage of the strongest ethics reform legislation” in three decades, Sens. Russ Feingold of Wisconsin and Barack Obama of Illinois said in a statement.

That about sums it up. The Democrats want to bring about ethics reform, the Republicans want to expand presidential power.

I had previously worried, and apparently from the comments some of you had as well, that the “100 Hours” commitment the Democrats made was mostly lip service. It was nice to hear, but chances were we wouldn’t get most of it, and I was hoping chiefly for a blunting of the “rubber stamp” era.

Well slap my ass and call me Sally, so far the House Dems have 5 of 6 commitments taken care of, and they’ve got plenty of time to go.

According to Pelosi’s count, it has taken just over 34 hours to pass the first five bills, including a measure approved Wednesday to lower interest rates on some student loans.

The House actually has been in session for more than 72 hours since the 110th Congress was sworn in on Jan. 4. But the clock on Pelosi’s Web site suggested that 34 hours, 5 minutes had elapsed by the close of House business Wednesday.

Pelosi’s going by hours spent on legislation, but the fact that by ANY count they’ve still got at least a full 24 hours before they’re out of range to pass this one last bill is just amazing. Here are the bills, with links to the given stories.

make the government negotiate for lower Medicare prescription drug prices. It passed last Friday.

expand federally funded stem cell research. It passed Jan. 11.

raise the federal minimum wage. It passed Jan. 10.

seek to bolster terrorism-fighting efforts. It passed Jan. 9.

change rules governing ethics, lobbying and the budget. These changes were passed on Jan. 4-5.

Amazing. Maybe things actually WILL start to go in the right direction after all. There’s a ways to go, but honestly there’s little I can say to complain. They’ve hit on all the key areas I was hoping for. Science, economy, fighting terrorism, social services, responsibility in government.

And you know what? I’d like to raise a glass to every single Republican who voted alongside the Democrats on these bills. Here’s to an America where people vote for what’s right because they know it’s right. Here’s to the hope that this will continue, maybe not at the feverish pace, but progress will continue to be made.

Of course, Bush could start a veto spree and repeatedly shut these down, but given the massive support they’ve had I’d say most would easily get the 2/3 margin necessary to override.