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George's law prevails?

That the Bush White House and the Bush Administration has been both scandal-ridden and assumed to itself the right to be above the law, is almost a given. The examples down the years George W has been President are now legion.

The Washington Post reports on a dimension of how the Justice Department, in effect, place the edict of George W above the law of the land:

"The Justice Department sent a legal memorandum to the Pentagon in 2003 asserting that federal laws prohibiting assault, maiming and other crimes did not apply to military interrogators who questioned al-Qaeda captives because the president's ultimate authority as commander in chief overrode such statutes.

The 81-page memo, which was declassified and released publicly yesterday, argues that poking, slapping or shoving detainees would not give rise to criminal liability. The document also appears to defend the use of mind-altering drugs that do not produce "an extreme effect" calculated to "cause a profound disruption of the senses or personality."

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