Im not sure I understand why it would be set up with a many to many relationship roles to permissions. A cheesy example why would I ever add something like a "Publish News" permission to the "Mailing List" role. I wouldnt. So, wouldn't it make more sense to just have a permissions table that contains a "RoleID" column? Im sure the way its done it makes perfect sense to somebody but I dont get it.

I guess I've answered my own question. It would be useful if you want to have different scales of say News Contributors and Managers

To continue this conversation with myself I elected to create an "Available Permissions" list box rather than the drop down permissions list. This restricts the role creator to only place permissions related to the specific category when creating the role rather than allowing the selection of something like my initial question placing a "Publish News" permission into the "Mailing List" category.