The President Keeps Making News

I have so many other things to write about, but I keep getting intercepted by the most incredible news from the White House.
The latest, though so closely interwoven with the past as to seem an inevitable outgrowth: "Then came The New York Times report Friday that said Bush had authorized the National Security Agency to intercept overseas phone calls and e-mails from people in the United States. Bush's actions, which he maintains are justified under his powers as commander in chief, nonetheless violated a 1978 act of Congress and set the stage for a full-scale power struggle between the executive and legislative branches.
" (Boston Globe, Dec. 18).
Or, as Bradford Berenson, the President's associate counsel between 2001 and 2003 put it "After 9/11, the president felt it was incumbent on him to use every ounce of authority available to him to protect the American people,..."
Now, I completeley agree that the primary job of the President, indeed of the government, is to protect the people. This however is so evocative of the classical question: Quis custodiet ipsos custodes, that I now ask, who is seeing to it that the people are being protected from the President?
This is so close to the concept of destroying the village in order to save it that it almost seems that the President was in fact paying attention to the Vietnam War, only it looks like he got every lesson backwards-to.
George - You Aren't Supposed To Destroy The Village (the United States in this case) In Order To Save It! Bad!
While I'm in the neighborhood, so to speak; George - Torture! Bad! Also, the incredibly bogus argument about the hidden nuclear bomb that we can only find if we are just permitted to torture twice the usual suspects, just a teensy little bit - get real! If you're willing to argue that you have failed to prevent such a situation, why are we supposed to presume you can find the right person to torture, and why do we think you can get the truth by torture, famously a way to get the answers you want rather than the truth; also famously a way to make yourself feel powerful as hell.
Christmas approaches, so I'll try to find something Christmassy to say next time.