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 The
fact that President Bush did not use his veto for over five years
was unusual. Most presidents since President Truman used the veto
an average of two times a year, according to historian Kathryn
Dunn Tenpas, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who
appeared on a July 19 NewsHour discussion.
Tenpas said one of the reasons President Bush did not have to
use his veto was because the Republicans who control Congress
are from his same party and often handed him bills that were to
his liking.
Although the president has just issued his first veto, political
experts say he still has used his presidential influence by threatening
to veto legislation and using a technique called "signing
statements."
 On
several occasions, the president has signed bills, then issued
statements reserving the right not to enforce or execute parts
of the new laws on the grounds that they infringe on presidential
authority, or violate national security or other constitutional
provisions.
In this way, he has challenged parts of laws, including a congressional
ban on torture, a request for data on the USA Patriot Act, whistle-blower
protections and the banning of U.S. troops in fighting rebels
in Colombia, according to The Washington Post.
A panel of legal scholars and lawyers assembled by the American
Bar Association recently criticized the use of signing statements
as undermining the Constitution, but the president and his supporters
defend them.
 "They're
a way to try to assert an independent view by the executive branch
in ways that they think will be held up by the courts. It's not
quite a veto, but it's definitely in a gray area that I don't
think we've seen before," said Michael Franc of the conservative
Heritage Foundation on the July 19 NewsHour.
The Justice Department has said that President Bush has issued
110 signing statements, compared with President Bill Clinton's
80.
--Compiled
byAnnie Schleicher for NewsHour Extra
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This
was the president's first use of the veto in his five-and-a-half
years in office. The proposed law would have allowed federal funding
to go toward research using stem cells from human embryos -- a
process that requires the embryos to be destroyed. 
The
use of the presidential veto has evolved over time. Early presidents
used it sparingly, when they felt Congress had violated the Constitution.
Thomas Jefferson never cast a veto.
I think we've been witnessing violence for years, whether in reality through the media or through video games, and I don't think that's a first-hand effect.
