“When a Republican President does it, that means it is not illegal”

Can we dispense with the disingenuous outrage?  I am suspect of executive privilege; while it may have its place, I didn’t like it when Bush used it (many times) and don’t like it when Obama uses it for the first time.  But for 8 years of the Bush administration we heard theories, most vociferously espoused by Dick Cheney, about the supreme executive, which lead to the assertion of privilege (remember that we could not know what energy executives met with Cheney to establish US energy policy), executive orders and signing statements.  Some feared, even then, this eerie echo of Nixon’s assertion that “When the President does it, that means it is not illegal”.  It is unfortunate that Obama, who espoused a different executive, an open and honest presidency, has now asserted this privilege, even for his first time.  But more disheartening and distasteful is the hypocrisy, the fake outrage of Republican lawmakers who once cheered Bush’s exercise of executive power only to now view it as dictatorial.  Behavior they once supported is now the end of American freedom.  We hear incessantly about “shredding the Constitution” from those who wanted Bush to listen in on Americans’ private phone conversations and detain citizens without due process.  Just as with many other Republican policies and strategies, when Obama endorses or uses them, they become cause for alarm and pseudo-outrage and panic, the end of our society as we know it.  Rush Limbaugh once played a song about the seemingly magic powers of Obama.  Although it was widely panned, it now seems we can see those powers on display; in what can only be considered a miracle, by the mere sound of his voice Obama has awakened large numbers of Republicans who spent the first 8 years of this century in a coma.  To borrow and update Nixon’s quote; “When a Republican President does it, that means it is not illegal”.