i am the law!

I’m beginning to think that we have Dick Cheney morphing into the wrong cartoon character.

For years, it’s been Darth Vader, making Cheney the Dark Lord of the Republican Party. It’s worked, especially since he talks like he’s wearing a Sith breath mask. The past week, it’s been Cheney as Elmer Fudd, considering his hunting mishap.

But the final minute of the Veep’s interview with Brit Hume on Fox News, the next cartoon identity for Dick Cheney revealed itself.

Cheney sees himself as Judge Dredd.

You remember the judge – Sylvester Stallone in a tricked-out motorcycle helmet, his upper lip curling menacingly, loudly proclaiming “I AM THE LAW!”

That’s the giveaway. Cheney, like Bush, does not think he is above the law. When the Justice Department comes calling to talk about the Veep’s role in leaking classified material to the press in the ramp-up to the invasion of Iraq, he’s going to claim that anything he okays for release is, by definition, declassified.

You won’t hear about this new tact in the Scooter Libby leak case in the mainstream media. Nor will you hear anything regarding Cheney’s “date” while hunting on the Armstrong Ranch over the weekend – the United States Ambassador to Switzerland, Pamela Willeford. No. For this kind of information you need to go to a news source that isn’t owned by someone classified as a Bush/Cheney Pioneer – which includes ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, Fox News, Associated Press, Editor & Publisher, Knight-Ridder Newspapers, Gannett, Clear Channel Radio, Reuters, the New York Times, Washington Post, Time, Newsweek, et al. Once again, the Internet is the single source really examining the news. Perhaps, by the weekend you can read about it in the Guardian – British newspapers seem to do more investigation into U.S. news that U.S. news organizations do.

This latest arrogance in the face of the United States Constitution is in keeping with the Bush Administration’s hypocrisy. They nitpick through the law to find any thread they can exploit in support of their illegal conduct. Other than that, they treat it like two-ply Charmin, and I don’t mean Mr. Whipple giving it a good squeeze. Once the next administration is sworn in – a Democratic administration – they’re going to have to call in document experts to painstakingly clean the brown stains off those hallowed words “We the People …”

To the right of this post is a too-short list of news sources I look to for information you cannot find in a mainstream newspaper. And I work for a mainstream newspaper.

Check them out.

More soon.