"The United States of America will not permit the world’s most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world’s most destructive weapons," President Bush vowed in his January 29, 2002, State of the Union address. Two and a half years later, one member of the "axis of evil" that Bush denounced in the same speech, North Korea, may have as many as eight nuclear bombs and be on its way to making about a dozen a year, with every intention of selling them to terrorists and other willing bidders.

Deputy Solicitor General Paul Clement argued skillfully before the Supreme Court on April 28 for President Bush’s claim that the military can grab any American suspected of being an "enemy combatant," anywhere, at any time, and hold him incommunicado for months, years, even for life, with no chance to see a lawyer or tell a court that he is an innocent civilian.

"We did not know an attack was coming because, for nearly a decade, our government had blinded itself to its enemies." So said Attorney General John Ashcroft in his April 13 testimony to the 9/11 commission. He accused commission member Jamie Gorelick of "flawed legal reasoning" in a 1995 memorandum in which, as Bill Clinton’s deputy attorney general, she had helped raise a legalistic "wall [that] left intelligence agents afraid to talk with criminal prosecutors or agents."