Bush Puts Himself above the Law

The list is growing of laws that Bush has violated. Americans need to come to terms with the fact that President George W. Bush frequently feels he is entitled to break the law and that he can ignore the legal authority of the courts and Congress. It appears a lot of the law-breaking is intended to help his friends in business or to cover up Bush's own blunders and wrongdoing. No American, including the president, is above the law. Even lying to Congress is legally unacceptable. Glenn Greenwald has an article on the growing attention finally given to Bush's contempt for the Constitution and the checks and balance we're supposed to have:

On March 24, 2006, The Boston Globe published an article by Charlie Savage reporting that the President, after signing into law the bill which renewed the Patriot Act, issued a "signing statement" making clear that "he did not consider himself bound" to comply with various reporting provisions in the law and therefore reserved the right to violate them. The article was extraordinary because it noted that the Patriot Act signing statement was merely "the latest in a string of high-profile instances in which Bush has cited his constitutional authority to bypass a law" -- and the article tied that ideology of lawlessness to, among other things, the President's deliberate violations of FISA when ordering warrantless eavesdropping on Americans.

I discussed that Globe article in my book and described it as "an important milestone," because "it is one of the first truly comprehensive articles by an establishment media outlet to recognize the fact that the president has expressly seized the power to break the law, and is exercising that power enthusiastically and aggressively, in numerous ways." Once the reality of the president's claimed lawbreaking powers starts to be truly discussed in our national political dialogue, I believe there will finally be accountability for what this administration has done.

The Globe has today published an even more sweeping and significant article, this one also by Savage, reporting as clearly and unambiguously as I have seen on the fact that the President not only believes that he has the right to break the law but has been exercising that right with staggering frequency, in almost every area of significance...

Most Americans miss the significance of Bush's landing on the Abraham Lincoln three years ago today. Bush was strutting like the vain rooster that he is. I realize that fundamentally Bush is the rich spoiled brat of a powerful and wealthy political family and has gotten away with a lot in his personal life but ignoring or violating 750 laws is extraordinary; or is it more extraordinary that Congress and the media ignored the incompetence and arrogance for so long? Make no mistake: Cheney, Rumsfeld, Condi Rice, Karl Rove, John Bolton and a number of others are knowing, and in some cases gleeful, accomplices of the law breaking. Something is very wrong with our country at the moment.