A Nation of Law, Unless It’s Inconvenient
The Bush administration believes if a law is inconvenient for them, Congress ought to change it.
We love law in this country even though we detest lawyers. Every chance we get we boast about being a nation of laws, pointing out with a certain drama and piety that law is what separates us from the less civilized. We smugly take the less civilized to mean everyone else.
It was not Bill Clinton’s infidelity we nearly lynched him for, it was his ‘lying under oath’ that so outrageously offended our legal sensitivity. Likewise, Richard Nixon was pulled down from his damaged presidency, not for his more unpalatable failings, but for his abuse of law. We are, Republican and Democrat, liberal and conservative, religious or atheist, one thing above all others—believers in law.
Unless, of course, belief in the laws of the land become inconvenient; maybe a little hard to swallow; burdensome to what has already transpired; a possible window left open to indictable activity.
Normally, that’s called com…