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TIMING IS EVERYTHING

This afternoon, an advisory arrived from the White House saying the president would sign his veto at 6:10 p.m. Eastern time.  We were further told he would speak for approximately nine minutes and would take no questions. If all goes off on time, that would end the event at 6:19, 11 minutes before the first live feed of NBC Nightly News -- not that anything the White House does -- this White House or any other -- is about optimizing news coverage.

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How a bill is vetoed

Since the expected veto of the Iraq spending bill is so high profile, how does a president actually do it?

The answer comes from the U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 7. It says if the president wants to veto a bill, "he shall return it, together with his Objections, to the House in which it shall have originated, who shall enter the Objections at large on their Journal, and proceed to reconsider it."

As a practical matter, say administration officials, it works this way. The president doesn't actually do anything to the bill. No rubber stamps that say "VETOED" across the face of it, as visually appealing as that would be. Instead, he writes a message to, in this case, the House, which states his objections. This is the veto message. That, along with the bill, will be returned to the House by the executive clerk. 

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Early Nightly is up

NBC's Chip Reid is on Capitol Hill where he previews the stories we're working on for tonight's broadcast, including the public signing ceremony of the Iraq spending bill scheduled for today. It's a bit of a departure from normal protocol -- Congressional signing ceremonies are usually held in private. Chip explains why this time is a bit different.

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'Mr. Excitement'

We just this afternoon stumbled upon a clear generational dividing line on our staff: the death, announced earlier today, of Tommy Newsom. Many of our younger employees had never heard of "Mr. Excitement," as Johnny Carson famously dubbed him. Tommy was a stone-faced regular in the Tonight Show orchestra for 30 years, rising to prominence as fill-in for Doc Severinsen. He was the perfect foil for Carson -- always dead-on deadpan, sober and serious -- but never self-serious. Tommy Newsom died today at the age of 78. We will take time to remember him as a member of the NBC family tonight.

In the news: George Tenet will be one of our components tonight -- the book rollout not going quite the way he had anticipated -- the first mistake in the book turns out to be on page one. There's been some criticism of the time delay between injustices (as perceived by the author) and claims of injustices by the author. As part of Tom Brokaw's extended interview with him, we have a lot more material on the subject for air tonight. Two reports are out: one on terrorist attacks worldwide, and the other on Ehud Olmert's performance during the Israeli war with Hezbollah.

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Tony Snow's future

White House press secretaries don't usually get a round of applause in the briefing room, but Tony Snow's return today was different. He's back after learning five weeks ago that his colon cancer returned and that cancer cells are now attached to his liver. Five weeks ago, the outlook was grim from the White House and his friends. Today, after we sat for an interview that will air tonight on Nightly News, he said the day he made his condition public, he initially got it wrong, telling his own press office staff the cancer was inside his liver. As I said, the cancer is attached, which doctors have told him is an important difference. It's rare, I joked with him today, that a press secretary inadvertently makes something sound worse than it is!

Nevertheless, this is a serious time for Tony, his wife and three kids. He begins chemotherapy this Friday and faces an uncertain future. He's forced, he said, to look at life in small chunks of time rather than gazing out at a seemingly endless horizon.

Video: For the first time in five weeks, Tony Snow talks to reporters from a White House podium. This video is from the morning "gaggle" with reporters, which is usually off-camera.

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Early Nightly is up

Someone joked on the morning editorial call that the broadcast will need an hour tonight to fit in all of the day's news. Brian looks ahead to a few of those stories in today's vlog -- including the overpass collapse in San Francisco, the D.C. madam and this New York Times 'Week in Review' story about people buying carbon neutrality.

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Tale of the tape

The U.S. Supreme Court today ruled in favor of a Georgia sheriff's deputy who rammed a car after a high speed chase, causing a spectacular crash that left the 19-year-old driver paralyzed.

Today's decision relied, in an unusual way, on videotape of the chase recorded in the deputy's car. It was so central to the ruling that the court took the unusual step of posting it on its Web site. To the majority of the court, the tape shows the driver putting at risk the safety of others on the road. "We see him racing down narrow two-lane roads, in the dark of night, at speeds shockingly fast," said Justice Antonin Scalia for the majority, which found that no jury could have concluded anything but that he put innocent members of the public at risk.

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Sunday's broadcast

Those of us who witnessed -- either first-hand or on television -- the devastation from Hurricane Katrina still remember the images of residents suffering along the Gulf Coast. So we took notice of today's Washington Post, which reports that, in the wake of that disaster, the U.S. government either turned down or lost track of hundreds of millions of dollars worth of aid from foreign governments -- everything from medical supplies to search-and-rescue teams to cash. Why would the U.S. turn away help when so many of its own were in need? NBC's Martin Savidge, who reported from New Orleans in the aftermath of the storm, will explain and bring us reaction from the Crescent City.

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