blue dress debacle. The rule of law seems defunct these days.
Aliens and the Rule of Law by Mike Kress
http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0509-05.htm "The phrase "rule of law" is no pious aspiration from a civics textbook. The rule of law is what stands between all of us and the arbitrary exercise of power by the state. The rule of law is the safeguard of our liberties. The rule of law is what allows us to live our freedom in ways that honor the freedom of others, while strengthening the common good." - Rep. Henry Hyde (R-IL); Sept. 11, 1998 A Plague on Their Houses12/19/98
http://www.salon.com/news/1998/12/cov_18newsf2.htmlNext, we consider Rep. Henry Hyde, the Republican chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, who has spearheaded the effort to impeach the president. In explaining his vote in favor of impeachment, Hyde solemnly stated:
"We are fighting for the rule of law. I think it is our constitutional duty under the law to pursue impeachment. I'm frightened for the rule of law." Apparently, however, Hyde came to his appreciation for the law late in life. Almost a decade ago, as a member of the special Iran-contra congressional investigating committee, Hyde was an outspoken and craven apologist for the Reagan administration's often illegal and extraconstitutional foreign policy toward Iran and Nicaragua.
Hyde did not lie awake late at night fearing for the fate of the rule of law then. Unlike Whitewater and the Monica Lewinsky affair, Iran-contra involved lawbreaking and abuses of power by the president and his most senior national security advisers that were central to the governance of the nation. They included illegal arms sales by the Reagan administration to Iran, a terrorist state, as well as the covert funding of the contras, despite the fact that such assistance was also illegal.
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As a ranking Republican on the Iran-contra committee in 1987, Hyde had this to say at the time about the massive lawbreaking within the Reagan White House: "All of us, at some time, confront conflicts between rights and duties, between choices that are evil and less evil, and one hardly exhausts moral indignation by labeling every untruth and every deception an outrage." Hyde also excused the conduct of National Security Council aide Oliver North by asserting that during previous presidencies, the White House had long been "a palace of pragmatism where dishonesty flourished."