One thing you’ve gotta give the Bush Administration credit for is that they’ve got an amazing knack for thinking three steps ahead. Case in point, the recent Supreme Court decision that obliterated the Administration’s legal justifications for torture, NSA wiretapping, etc. The beauty of the decision wasn’t that it settled a legal dispute, but that it reaffirmed the letter of existing law. In other words, the court said “I don’t care what your fancy lawyers say, you’re still bound by the law”. The Bushies thought having their legal team invent extra-constitutional grounds for breaking the law would free them of their legal obligations (as an aside, I long for a day when we have leaders who don’t consider the law an “obligation”), but the Supreme Court made it clear that the “I’ve got a shitty lawyer” defense doesn’t fly.

Which bring us to the brilliance of the Bush Administration strategy. Not only have they done their best to stack the courts with judges who think the executive branch should be able to act with impunity, but they’ve rigged another important part of the puzzle as well. If one wanted to bring federal charges against the President, they’d have to be filed by the Justice Department which is now being run by the “shitty lawyer” mentioned above. If I remember correctly, a lot of us thought it was a really bad idea to give a promotion to the guy who strained to find ways to excuse the President’s use of torture. Unfortunately that view wasn’t held by any of the Republicans in the Senate (or a certain fair-weather Democrat fighting for his political life)