On the Memorial Day weekend of 1974, I took a 12-hour ride on a Greyhound bus to Washington, D.C. It was the first time I’d traveled outside Ohio. I stayed at a cheap hotel and did as many touristy things as I could cram into a long holiday weekend.

I brought back fake parchment facsimiles of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Declaration of Independence, and I hung them on the wall in my apartment. When a visitor asked where I’d got them, I said I’d taken the White House tour, and someone had thrust the papers at me from behind a door and whispered tensely, “Psst! Buddy! Get rid of these for me!”

Richard Nixon was president then, and everybody got the joke, even if they didn’t laugh. It’s been more than thirty years since I’ve told that joke, but I think it’s time to trot it out again.

From Daily Kos:

Fawn Hall, Oliver North’s secretary during the Iran Contra Scandal, said in her testimony during the Congressional investigation of Iran Contra:

[T]here were “times when you have to go above the written law.”

And defenders of President Bush’s disregard of FISA have adopted this Fawn Hall defense. Of course, Vice President Dick Cheney does not put it exactly that way. Instead he argues that the President is above the law…

…

Cheney suggested that Democrats who push to reduce the powers of the presidency in the wake of the disclosure of the eavesdropping program would pay a political price. “Either we’re serious about fighting the war on terror or we’re not,” he said. “Either we believe that there are individuals out there doing everything they can to try to launch more attacks, try to get ever deadlier weapons to use against us or we don’t. The president and I believe very deeply that there is a hell of a threat.”

Well, Mr. Vice President, either we are serious about following the Constitution and the law or we are not. Either we believe the Constitution is the supreme law of the land and no person is above the law, or we don’t. I believe the Bush Administration is a hell of a threat to the rule of law and the Constitution. And I don’t care if there is a political price for saying so.

…

Privately, administration officials have said for months that they see the anti-terrorism fight as a decades-long struggle similar to the Cold War that dominated the second half of the 20th century.

So the question the Media needs to ask is ‘is the Constitution now indefinitely suspended?’ And when did we decide to do that?