This was in response to an editorial called "Quick Fixes" which appeared in the Richmond Times Dispatch on February 18, 2003.  The paper did not publish my letter or any other regarding this, but they did print a correction two days later on February 20.

In your editorial Quick Fixes, you state that, "President Bush should use the line-item power everyone seems to have forgotten he has and excise such absurdities as..."  The reason everyone seems to have forgotten he has this power is that he doesn't! 

The line-item veto was signed into law by President Clinton in 1996 and took effect in January of 1997.  Clinton became the first, and only, president to use this power in 1997 because the line-item veto was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1998.  The Court ruled in Clinton v. City of New York that the law violated the Presentment Clause of Article I and that a constitutional amendment was needed in order to give the president this power.

This example of incredibly poor research, of course, is just the latest in a long line of factual errors and distortions of the truth that appear almost daily on the Editorial Page of the Tee Dee.  In the case of Quick Fixes, the overall point that one way to “fix” the problem of increasing deficits is to check the proliferation of pork-barrel projects is valid.  Your suggestion that the president exercise a nonexistent power as part of a solution calls into question your ability even to discuss seriously issues of such weight.  Richmond  deserves better!