What do the Pirate's Code and the Constituion have in common?

What do the Pirate's Code from the movie Pirates of the Caribbean and the Constitution of the United States have in common? Simple.

The bad guy doesn't follow it because he thinks that it's more like a set of guidelines anyway.

The Boston Globe is reporting that Bush has decided that he's not just above the law, but above seven hundred and fifty laws. From the article:

President Bush has quietly claimed the authority to disobey more than 750 laws enacted since he took office, asserting that he has the power to set aside any statute passed by Congress when it conflicts with his interpretation of the Constitution.

Among the laws Bush said he can ignore are military rules and regulations, affirmative-action provisions, requirements that Congress be told about immigration services problems, ''whistle-blower" protections for nuclear regulatory officials, and safeguards against political interference in federally funded research.

It wouldn't be so bad, except our spineless, Republican-led legislature don't have the balls (brains? either?) to do the right thing and kindly ask him to start obeying the law. We have no checks and balances right now. We have rubber stamps and yes-men.

This is on the heels of USA Today revealing that Bush has the NSA tracking everyone's phone calls, not just the ones suspected terrorists have been making, and not just international calls. Before Bush's illegal warrantless domestic wiretapping program was made public, he publicly claimed that all surveillance was being done with judicial oversight. We found out otherwise, and he said they're only watching international calls to suspected terrorists. Then we found out it wasn't just to suspected terrorists. Now we find out he's tracking everyone's calls. And he says that well, but we're not actually listening to the calls. Yeah, right.

After a seemingly endless stream of instances of the American people finding out that our president has been doing illegal stuff, and then he lies about the scope of what he did, only for us to find out he lied about the scope, too, why the hell should we believe him now? And what other things has he lied about that he's managed to keep secret?

I'm sorry, but I don't want to live in a surveillance society with an opaque, untrustable government just because the wussy neocons are afraid of terrorists. Show a little backbone - we're supposed to be Americans who value freedom and democracy.