It think if one reads this explanation of "rule of law" from our own government, one will discover that we stopped honoring that rule of law a long time ago and both parties had a big hand in the process. I think that there are many in the poor, working poor, and working classes that would argue that we are not a nation under "rule of law" at all.

# Rule of law means that no individual, president or private citizen, stands above law. Democratic governments exercise authority by way of law and are themselves subject to law's constraints.

# Laws should express the will of the people, not the whims of kings, dictators, military officials, religious leaders, or self-appointed political parties.

# Citizens in democracies are willing to obey the laws of their society, then, because they are submitting to their own rules and regulations. Justice is best achieved when the laws are established by the very people who must obey them.

# Under the rule of law, a system of strong, independent courts should have the power and authority, resources, and the prestige to hold government officials, even top leaders, accountable to the nation's laws and regulations.

# For this reason, judges should be well trained, professional, independent, and impartial. To serve their necessary role in the legal and political system, judges must be committed to the principles of democracy.

# The laws of a democracy may have many sources: written constitutions; statutes and regulations; religious and ethical teachings; and cultural traditions and practices. Regardless of origin the law should enshrine certain provisions to protect the rights and freedoms of citizens: ...

http://usinfo.state.gov/products/pubs/principles/law.htm

Notice that "top leaders" does not mean just assistants to top leaders. :-(

News Hounds; We watch FOX so you don't have to.:

http://www.newshounds.us/

Well, now we know it's deliberate! Monday's Special Report (June 11, 2007) falsely identified Independent Senator Joseph Leiberman as a Democrat. FOX News correspondent James Rosen's actual words to describe Lieberman were "a prominent Senate Democrat." This leaves no doubt that FOX News has engaged in a concerted effort to mislead its viewers. Isn't it time for the Connecticut Democrats (or even Lieberman himself) to raise an objection? This third incident of "mistaken identification" in less than 24 hours occurred during a segment about the upcoming Bush-Cheney war on Iran, which we all dread will occur about the same time that Israel and Syria start shooting at each other in July. You can bet FOX News will be right there, on the front lines of Armageddon in order to cover the Second Coming.

---

Not good. That means they trying to pin at least share the blame on Democrats.

'... The legal principles that guarantee a fair trial have been eroded by both good and bad intentions.

William Blackstone called these principles "the Rights of Englishmen." Achieved through centuries of struggle to make law accountable and justice just, the Rights of Englishmen insure that law is a shield for the innocent and not a weapon in the hands of prosecutors. Liberals and conservatives alike, in chasing after their favorite devils – drug dealers, environmental polluters, white-collar criminals, and child abusers – have reduced these protective principles to shadows of their former selves.

The Rights of Englishmen are: due process, the attorney-client privilege, equality before the law, the right to confront adverse witnesses, and the prohibitions against attacking a person through his property, bills of attainder, self-incrimination, retroactive law, and crimes without intent.

Each of these protective principles has been breached. Today prosecutors create bills of attainder by tailoring novel interpretations of law to fit the targeted defendant. A favorite tactic is to criminalize civil infractions, as in the Charles Keating savings and loan case. We have indictments and trials based not on a statutory violation but on a prosecutor's "novel theory," as in the Clark Clifford and Robert Altman case. Even accidents and mistakes in filling out government forms have been criminalized, as in the Exxon Valdez and Benjamin Lacy cases. The ancient principle of mens rea – no crime without intent – has been obliterated.

...

For centuries prosecutorial behavior was restrained by conscience and by the carefully inculcated ethic that the prosecutor's duty is to serve justice by finding truth. The purpose of a trial was to weigh the evidence for and against the defendant, not to convict him at any cost. A prosecutor's career and self-esteem did not depend on his conviction rate and the number of people he put behind bars, but, as Supreme Court justices Robert Jackson and George Sutherland put it, on seeing that justice was done. A prosecutor who suborned perjury or withheld exculpatory evidence in order to win a case was seen as a shameful figure.

...

Withholding exculpatory evidence has become routine, and suborned perjury is often the only "evidence" in a case. Juries are unaware that in many cases the witness giving incriminating testimony is not only rehearsed in the role but also paid by the prosecutor with money or reduced prison time. In 1998 the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette summed up its investigative reports of prosecutorial misconduct: "Hundreds of times during the past 10 years, federal agents and prosecutors have pursued justice by breaking the law. They lied, hid evidence, distorted facts, engaged in cover-ups, paid for perjury and set up innocent people in a relentless effort to win indictments, guilty pleas and convictions. Rarely were these federal officials punished for their misconduct. . . . Perjury has become the coin of the realm in federal law enforcement. People's homes are invaded because of lies. People are arrested because of lies. People go to prison because of lies. People stay in prison because of lies, and bad guys go free because of lies." It casts doubt on the integrity of the entire criminal justice system when the limited resources of one newspaper are sufficient to expose hundreds of cases of criminal behavior by federal law enforcement officials.'

The only question is if America can restore these principles. I wager both parties will shy away from doing so.