End of law

American Leona Helmsley politicians of both parties have proven and are proving that the rule of law is too much trouble - if you're rich and powerful enough to have a lobbyist and to make campaign contributions. Only the little people obey the law.

Britney Spears and Michael Vick really missed out. If they had made campaign contributions while they still had resources, they could have bought their way out of the celebrity fixes they're in.

At least the long-suffering Fourth Amendment is out of its misery. Now the authority of Congress to pass laws that anyone with the slightest bit of pull has to obey looks really weak. Duhbya doesn't obey, and now the telecoms, not to mention Halliburton, Enron, and Blackwater.

The telecoms, by the way, employ lawyers. There is no way the plain meaning of their statutory responsibility to maintain confidentiality could have been difficult for them to interpret. They chose to violate them under the extortion and transparently bogus legal rationales of the Bushists.

Congress, if you're listening to anyone who has this perspective, prove me wrong. Go ahead, punks, make my day.

Note: My own Congressman, Jim McGovern, is most heartily excepted from this screed. Ted Kennedy, too.