Did someone say dictator?

Add this to the growing mound of evidence that the Bush/Cheney White House truly think they are simnply dictators, above the law, above congress, above the supreme court, and even above their own Justice Dept.

What's it gonna take for people to sit up on their hind legs and notice what's going on?

President Bush effectively blocked a Justice Department investigation of the National Security Agency's warrantless surveillance program, refusing to give security clearances to attorneys who were attempting to conduct the probe, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said Tuesday.

Bush's decision represents an unusually direct and unprecedented White House intervention into an investigation by the Office of Professional Responsibility, the internal affairs office at Justice, according to administration officials and legal experts. It forced OPR to abandon its investigation of the role played by Justice Department officials in authorizing and monitoring the controversial NSA eavesdropping effort.

"Since its creation some 31 years ago, OPR has conducted many highly sensitive investigations involving Executive Branch programs and has obtained access to information classified at the highest levels," chief lawyer H. Marshall Jarrett wrote in a memorandum released Tuesday. "In all those years, OPR has never been prevented from initiating or pursuing an investigation."

In testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Gonzales said that in matters involving access to classified programs, "the president of the United States makes the decision."

Thanks to an alert reader for steering me to this.