Americans and Libby

A quick poll finds 60 percent of Americans oppose Bush's commutation of Libby's sentence. 40 percent of Republicans oppose it. If the case against the above-the-law president is made cogently and clearly, those numbers can go up. It's up to Democrats and those conservatives who still believe in the rule of law to make the case against the degeneracy in the White House.

We now have a clear and simple illustration of the arrogance of this president. Tell the American people the core narrative of this monarchical presidency: this president believes he is above the law in wiretapping citizens with no court oversight; he has innovated an explosive use of signing statements to declare himself above the law on a bewildering array of other matters, large and small; he has unilaterally declared himself above American law, international law, and U.N. Treaty obligations in secretly authorizing torture; he has claimed the right to seize anyone in the United States, detain them indefinitely without trial and torture them; his vice-president refuses to abide by the law that mandates securing classified documents;  and when a court of law finds a friend of the president's guilty, he commutes the sentence.

Most Americans find this blatant abuse of power repugnant - war or no war. Many find the way in which the commentariat has been coopted in defending this lawlessness to be equally repugnant. When a governing class declares itself collectively above the rule of law, and does so with open contempt for the judicial system, it's time that elite was brought down a peg or two. I think Bush just gave the country a simple reason to rid Washington of him and all he stands for. We will now see exactly what character Americans are made of: supplicants of a feather-bedded aristocracy or self-governing citizens under the rule of law?

Get angrier.