1) Attorney General Ashcroft issues a formal Opinion stating that Shays-Meehan is unconstitutional.
2) President Bush signs the law, BUT AT THE SAME TIME,
3) President Bush instructs the Justice Department and Solicitor General Olson to go to court immediately to seek a binding declaration that Shays-Meehan is unconstitutional.
Five times in the past, Presidents have instructed Justice and/or the Solicitor General to oppose federal laws under challenge, rather than support them. This part would be rare, but not unprecedented. The part that no President had ever done before was to sign a law and attack that law in the same day.
What the White House has actually done winds up fairly close to this. General Ashcroft and General Olson, while nominally still "defending" the law, have been sidelined by hard-left lawyers who will carry the water to defend Shays-Meehan. And, the challenges to the law did come on the very day that Bush signed the bill into law.
Where things stand today, it is likely, as this plan intended, that a Supreme Court decision striking the law would come down BEFORE the November election. That would not only defang CFR as a campaign issue, it would reverse it. Li'l Tommy Daschle and company will have to explain, going into the fall elections, why they overwhelmingly supported a clearly unconstitutional bill.
However, don't ask how I happened to see this plan, or who engineered that. That aspect must and will remain confidential.
Congressman Billybob
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