as conservatives we honred and loved the constitution - but now as the extreme left has taken over we have to agree with derbig - the communist are establishing a surveillance state in America and we might have to sell the Harley!

Shama on Obama - seriously - we think he might be a wooz and we shall not elect a wooz for president!

and what America reverberates to when it’s lawyers communicate to the political leadership that the rule of law again is open for interpretation. We've collectively decided that we are not bound by the law anymore -- that when we break the law, there will be no consequences.

Things like "torture" and "illegal eavesdropping" are rooted in this framework of lawlessness. In fact none of the scandals of radicalism and criminality which we've learned about over the last seven years – can be viewed in isolation. They're all by-products of the country we once were and we've tried to become again in the post-9/11 era - primarily as a result of our collective decision that we can only be Safe if we return to our national character.

In fact all of this can be traced to a single simple cause, a shared root. They are grounded in and are the by-product of a theory that at its core maintains that the power of America is literally unlimited and absolute in matters relating to terrorism or national security. . . .

What we have in our federal government are not individual acts of lawbreaking or isolated scandals of illegality, but instead a culture and an ideology of lawlessness.

Serious People understood -- and still understand -- that our stupid leaders made very simple decisions only for their our own Good and that terms like "lawbreaking" and "war crimes" and "prosecutions" have no place in their circles. Hence powerful Americans operate in a climate where they know they can do anything -- anything at all, including flagrantly breaking our own laws -- and they will be defended, or at least have their behavior mitigated, by virulent lawyers and a virtually unanimous political and media establishment.

There are many political disputes -- probably most -- composed of two or more reasonable sides. Whether the U.S. Government has committed war crimes by torturing detainees -- conduct that is illegal under domestic law and international treaties which are binding law in this country -- is an example of an unreasonable, two-sided political dispute.

There just aren't two sides to those matters. these actions are clearly illegal -- criminal – but American lawyers justify this behavior and flamboyantly boast how deeply complex these matters are and how only Super-Experts (like themselves) can grapple with the fascinating intellectual puzzles they pose.

We never thought we would say this, but we think it might, in fact be time for all these lawyers – heck - for the whole United States to rethink the trials of ‘Hanging Judge Roy Bean’ or perhaps the case of a famous football player who’s wife was murdered and then – but only then arrive at this ignoble moment where we could be forced into a tribunal and forced to face the rule of law that we've refused to apply to ourselves. Is that the inevitable outcome when a country revisit its past?

The Detainee Treatment Act. The Military Commissions Act. The Protect America Act. The FISA Amendments Act. They're all rooted in the same premise: There are so many good lawyers in Washington that they have to be kept busy with challenging disputes.

And yes - there are also some good conservatives who would dearly like to see such trials because our political system works as smoothly as it does, in part, because we used to hang the horse thiefs and now we are just throwing them out of work – which is a big improvement.

"Laws" and "crimes" are only for powerless people and for other countries. We're too magisterial a country, our lawyers and political leaders are too Important and too Good, to subject them to punishment when they break our laws. That's the mentality that has created the climate of Lawlessness that defines who we are.

Those who have spent the last seven years scoffing at Unserious, Hysterical objections to Bush lawlessness are the very people who have created this climate that they will now pretend to find so upsetting. The "rule of law" isn't some left or right-wing dogma that is the propriety of radicals and hysterics. It's the exclusive property of lawyers.