This is hardly the worst unconstitutional thing the Republicans have done, but it's gotta be the most flagrant:

[T]he House and Senate passed a major budget bill by the narrowest of margins in both chambers, including a tie-breaking vote in the Senate case by Vice President Cheney, but it turned out that the bill passed the House and Senate in different forms.

This was not simply a transcription error, a misplaced comma or a misspelled word--something that would be plenty serious--but a $2 billion discrepancy that arose over a last-minute compromise between the two chambers over the time allowed for the rental of medical equipment for Medicare patients. After the House had passed its version and the discrepancy became known, Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) unilaterally changed the House bill to match the Senate’s and then sent it on to President Bush, which he signed to great fanfare.

But a seventh-grade civics student who has done his or her homework would immediately know that what the president signed is not a law. Laws, as Article 1, Section 7 of the Constitution makes clear, must pass both chambers of Congress in identical form and then be signed by the president.

Of course, when Congress makes an error such as this one, it easily can be resolved by having both chambers re-pass the bill in identical form and having the president sign the proper bill. But not in this Congress with these leaders.

Because the two versions are different by a cool $2 billion, and because the more generous House version would be difficult to pass muster with fiscal conservatives, neither Hastert nor Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) wants to go through another vote. So they have decided to ignore the plain letter and intent of the Constitution and declare, with the same sensitivity to the rule of law as the queen of hearts, that it is law, period, because we say so.

How typical.  The bill never actually passed.  Yet, the President signed it into law anyway, because he makes his own reality.

Let me say that again.  The budget bill never actually passed.  And the Administration and Congressional leadership say it doesn't matter.

The WaPo takes up the chorus:

For anyone who took fifth-grade social studies or sang "I'm Just a Bill," how legislation turns to law always seemed pretty simple: The House passes a bill, the Senate passes the same bill, the president signs it.

"He signed ya, Bill -- now you're a law," shouts the cartoon lawmaker on "Schoolhouse Rock" as Bill acknowledges the cheers.

But last month, Washington threw all that old-fashioned civics stuff into a tizzy, when President Bush signed into law a bill that actually never passed the House. Bill -- in this case, a major budget-cutting measure that will affect millions of Americans -- became a law because it was "certified" by the leaders of the House and Senate.

After stewing for weeks, Public Citizen, a legislative watchdog group, sued yesterday to block the budget-cutting law, charging that Bush and Republican leaders of Congress flagrantly violated the Constitution when the president signed it into law knowing that the version that cleared the House was substantively different from the Senate's version.

The issue is bizarre, with even constitutional scholars saying they could not think of any precedent for the journey the budget bill took to becoming a law. Opponents of the budget law point to elementary-school civics lessons to make their case, while Republicans are evoking an obscure Supreme Court ruling from the 1890s to suggest a bill does not actually have to pass both chambers of Congress to become law.

The SCOTUS decision in question referred to above, Field v. Clark from 1892, doesn't quite say that.  From section 1 of Justice John Marshall Harlan's decision:

The argument, in behalf of the appellants, is that a bill, signed by the Speaker of the House of Representatives and by the President of the Senate, presented to and approved by the President of the United States, and delivered by the latter to the Secretary of State, as an act passed by Congress, does not become a law of the United States if it had not in fact been passed by Congress. In view of the express requirements of the Constitution, the correctness of this general principle cannot be doubted. There is no authority in the presiding officers of the House of Representatives and the Senate to attest by their signatures, not in the President to approve, nor in the Secretary of State to receive and cause to be published, as a legislative act, any bill not passed by Congress. [143 U.S. 649, 670] But this concession of the correctness of the general principle for which the appellants contend does not determine the precise question before the court; for it remains to inquire as to the nature of the evidence upon which a court may act when the issue is made as to whether a bill, originating in the House of Representatives or the Senate, and asserted to have become a law, was or was not passed by Congress. . .

We are of opinion, for the reasons stated, that it is not competent for the appellants to show, from the journals of either house, from the reports of committees, or from other documents printed by authority of Congress, that the enrolled bill, designated 'H. R. 9416,' as finally passed, contained a section that does not appear in the enrolled act in the custody of the State Department.

Now, I'm no lawyer, but how I read that in English would be something along the following lines:  "The argument before us is that a bill certified by both houses as having passed, and signed by the President, does not become a law if it hasn't actually been passed by Congress.  Because the Constitution says so.  But this argument doesn't quite address what we're called to decide -- we need to figure out how we can decide the academic question of whether a given bill was or not passed. . .and we're deciding that we don't have standing to decide this question."  (Again, I'm not a lawyer, so that admittedly rough paraphrase may be off the mark.  But that's how I read it.)

This looks kinda like a legal slam-dunk here -- after all, a tangentially applicable Supreme Court decision shouldn't trump Article I, Section 7 of the Constitution itself, which reads in part (with my emphasis):

Every bill which shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate, shall, before it become a law, be presented to the President of the United States; if he approve he shall sign it

Doesn't seem too difficult to me.  It has to have passed the House and the Senate.  Presumably, the same bill.

So this $2 billion mistake, why does it matter so much?  Why is the White House, to say nothing of the Congressional leadership, digging in its heels?  Why doesn't the conference committee make the bills identical, repass it, and send it down Pennsylvania Avenue to be made nice, tidy, and legal?

The WaPo again:

But that would mark the third time House members would have to cast their votes on a politically difficult bill, containing cuts in many popular programs, and it would be that much closer to the November election.

Go ahead and vote for us, they're saying.  Just ignore the fact that we, your elected leaders, disregard the very Constitution that brought this body into existence and enumerates our powers and responsibilities.  As I said above, this is far from the worst thing the Republican-controlled government has done to the document that provides a blueprint for our nation.  But if they won't even follow the supreme law of the land for something as simple as this, and for such a transparent excuse of a reason justifying it, then what makes you think they'll even remember the Constitution when they're voting on more important, consequential matters?