Iokkannon offers the thought-provoking observation that Bush's legacy will be our loss of trust in our government and in our institutions.

No, it isn't like that. What Bush has done is display what the Founders knew would happen if we could not trust our political leaders to bind themselves to honor and defend the prinicples articulated in the United States Constitution. It really does come down to that.

Our system of government presumes that men cannot help themselves and will advance their own interests unless constrained by the self interest of others. The checks and balances of the Constitution are designed to enforce this one fundamental principle. It is no accident that the oath the President takes is to protect and defend the Constitution, it is not to take such steps as he subjectively may think are in the best interests of the "country" or the "people". Going down that latter path places us under the rule of men, not the rule of law. The only thing we, as a nation, have the right to trust our President to do under the Constitution is to abide his oath to protect that Constitution and, in so doing, to respect the rule of law which our Constitution articulates.

George Bush doesn't recognize his oath. That's the record of his presidency. That others around him have let him get away with this is the legacy of others. But as for the demise of "trust", we aren't supposed to "trust" our government and our institutions, they are supposed to work properly precisely because we repose our trust in our leaders -- in our President -- to see that the government and its institutions operate under the auspices of the rule of law articulated by our Constitution.

That's why Bush needs to be impeached. All the other stuff is supporting evidence.

Let's see. Joe Klein writes a phenomenally dishonest diatribe lambasting liberal democrats for being "beyond stupid" for suggesting that it might not be a good idea to immunize telecom companies' complicity in the Bush administration's blatantly illegal agenda. Joe Klein is then criticized by some who actually object to the abject neocon-worshipping propaganda Klein and his editor have just written. And not only that, but those pesky Democrats didn't meekly go away like in times past, and the idea of fighting against telecom immunity for illegal spying lived to fight another day.

Now, "another day" is approaching and the issue that Klein so egregiously screwed up before could be back on the table. How can Mr. Klein hope to avoid being dismissed as an arrogant hack this time around? Got it: let's "remind" everyone what an incisive and long-tenured "liberal commentator" the illustrious Klein has "always" been! Hmm, need a hook... Got One! Remember when Joe Klein was The Principled Defender of Bill Clinton Against Media Excess during those evil Monica years?

Yeah. Go with it. Now, why again is it a good idea to allow corporations trading in citizens' private information to ignore clear Federal laws barring the disclosure of private information "because the President wanted it"? That's right, because "even leading liberal commentators like Joe Klein think that if you can't trust George Bush, who can you trust?"

Obama and Clinton suggest they are candidates of "change" but, on the issue of telecomm immunity, might they not better step to the fore as the candidates of "staying the course"?

By "staying the course", I refer to refusing to deviate from the history of the United States of America, the principles of the Constitution, the unified Congressional rejection of "retroactive immunity" when it was once proposed in the sixties and was blasted as an obscene notion by no less that Bobby Kennedy and Nicholas Katzenbach. By "staying the course", I mean rejecting the Bushsonian notion that the only opinion that matters is the President's and that the only laws that bind Americans are ones the current President likes.

It is the concept of retroactively immunizing plainly illegal activities that is an egregious "change" in leadership principles in America, not the other way around. Anyone voting to authorize retroactive immunity for felonies is seeking fundamentally to "change" the way the United States Constitution and laws are applied, in this country, to our citizens. And it's not a positive change, and it's not a change that makes any sense regardless of what one thinks about 9/11.

I want to hear Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama explain that they vigorously oppose Bush's demand for "retroactive telecom immunity" precisely because the Constitution's structural insistence upon the Rule of Law does NOT need to be "changed", it needs to be respected and enforced. That's the principle at stake, and that's where we need leaders to lead.