Mickey Kaus Follows Up...

Source: slate

I'm sticking with Mickey and I'll tell you why, his brand of over the top cynicism is precisely what the Dr. ordered as pertains to dealing with this president and his slippery Clintonian language on this issue. And he's been almost frighteningly prescient beating a lot of the CW commentators hands down several times this summer on immigration issues.

He sez...

"We expect ... " I telephoned the White House press office to ask if the President was going to sign the Secure Fence Act. Here's the response I got back from White House spokesman David Almacy:

"We expect the President to sign the bill but the last information we had was that we have not received the bill from Congress."

Does that sound definitive to you? I didn't think so. It doesn't to me either. "Expect" is a word that traditionally leaves a lot of wiggle room. Expectations change. ... Why can't they say: "The President will sign the Secure Fence Act"? There's a trick to talking to a paranoid they don't seem to have mastered! ... It's not as if Bush needs to build suspense for a cliffhanger signing ceremony. This isn't Sweeps Week. He needs to reassure the conservative pro-fence base. Which makes the White House failure to close the door on a veto all the more suspicious. ...