Michael Kinsley: Sign Language

Why does the press hold Bush to one constitutional standard and itself to another?
Updated Friday, May 5, 2006, at 6:21 AM ET

If there is anything scarier than a president who thinks he is above the law, it is a president who thinks that journalists aren't. That is the combined message from two major newspapers this week.

Last Sunday's Boston Globe carried an alarming 4,500-word front-page article about President Bush and the Constitution. It seems that Bush has asserted the right to ignore "vast swaths of laws," simply because he thinks that these laws are unconstitutional. Through the veil of objectivity, it is hard not to detect a note of disapproval here. Four times the article says that Bush has asserted this right "quietly," a word often used in news stories to imply menace. Quoted against Bush are people such as "legal scholars" and "many legal scholars," including "a professor who has studied the executive power claims Bush made during his first term," a "professor who studies executive power" and a "professor who specializes in executive-power issues." Quoted in his defense are "former administration officials" and "[s]ome administration defenders," as well as others who have served in or support the Bush administration.