Gov. Barbour and his supporters believe that Attorney General Jim Hood is playing politics with his lawsuit over the governor’s veto power. Of course, any right-minded person can see that’s not the case.

There are two issues with this case. The first was doing right by the state troopers, something to which the governor did not acquiesce until it was taken to court.

“It’s a shame it took a lawsuit to force the governor to do what was right,” Hood, a Democrat, said in an e-mail. “We will continue with our lawsuit because it will take the court to make the governor understand he does not rule the state single-handedly.”

The second is a constitutional question. Though the Mississippi Constitution does not grant a governor line-item veto power over legislative appropriations, Gov. Barbour decided he would use it anyway. (How’s that for someone who believes in “the letter of the law” and “strict constructionism” when it comes to interpreting law?)

In court documents, Hood wrote there was more than 100 years of precedent interpreting a governor’s limited ability to overstep legislative authority to appropriate money by means of a partial veto.

More than a century of legal precedent is what the governor is fighting here. This is one man who has some serious delusions of grandeur when it comes to his power.

As for Hood and the claims he is playing politics, that doesn’t hold water. This is a man who is considering a run for governor in 2011. Do you think he wants to limit his ability to govern? Of course not. But more than that, Jim Hood wants to do what is legal. He’s truly being our attorney general first and a politician second. Too bad some Republicans aren’t doing the same.