Bush Shows He Believes He is Above the Law
by Marie Cocco, Long Island, New York Newsday

Who needs the Patriot Act? Not President Run-amok.

The president has now admitted to secretly authorizing what amounts to an end-run around the law that is meant, specifically and determinedly, to keep intelligence agencies from snooping on Americans at home.

In asking the super-secret National Security Agency to monitor - without any court oversight whatsoever - the international phone calls and e-mails of hundreds of Americans, President George W. Bush has gone far beyond what even the Patriot Act allows. So why make a fuss over the Senate's refusal to extend it? Even if lawmakers passed it, Bush would ignore it.

This is a president who believes no law applies to him.

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For now we seem destined to live in a nation that spies on its own people, detains hundreds without charge and maintains secret prisons around the world. This is not the Soviet Union. But it is what we have allowed our union to become.

Full story here.