In the first week of Constitutional Law class, law students learn one simple lesson: The U.S. Constitution is the supreme law of the land.?That’s a lesson that is commonly understood. If President Bush hasn’t learned it, I am confident that all of the lawyers hired to advise him have. It’s a basic.

Now let’s combine that with a second lesson-one most recently touted by the Republican Party: No one-not even the President-is above the law. You will probably remember hearing that repeatedly from Republicans of all levels during the Lewinsky scandal.

Why is it that President Bush can’t comprehend either?

The domestic spying issue continues to have wide-ranging effects on our nation. But to understand it you need to know only two things. First of all, if the President wants to spy on any American, the law fully allows him to do so-as long as he gets a warrant. By the way, in order to get that warrant, he must appeal to a special court of secret judges who almost never deny the warrant requests. This is basic American law. Just like the police need a warrant to put you in jail or to stop a child pornography ring, President Bush needs a warrant to tap your phones.

Point two: No one-not the Democrats, privacy advocates or even Michael Moore-has said that the president should NOT have that power. They all agree that he should-as long as he does it right and gets his warrant. Of course, he didn’t do it right.

So the President gets caught not obeying the law. What’s the first thing he does? He starts a campaign to protect his power to tap phones to stop terrorists. But wait, there is no campaign to take that power away. He’s being deceitful. The only complaint anyone has is that he failed to obey the law.

So what does the president do now that he has been caught breaking the law? He tries to imprison those that caught him-the reporters and intelligence officials that revealed him with his hand in the cookie jar. This week, it was reported that the White House is looking into charging those who leaked and wrote the story, who are now imprisoned on charges of espionage.

Illegal, unconstitutional, domestic spying is very, very bad. But seeking to use your power as president to punish those that sought to protect the law? That is treading on new and dangerous ground.

Prior to law school I was a communications advisor in the Missouri House of Representatives. It was my job to make the news, and it was my job to minimize news that wasn’t good for the cause I worked for. There are a million people in a million movements, businesses?and political organizations who do the same thing every day.?For some, making the news is power. It can be the type of power that causes you to lose your ability to reason.

Sometimes those that make the news see the news as their product. But really, the news is the product of reporters, editors and publishers-not of the PR people that rely on them for their outlet. Those that lose sight of that sometimes react very poorly when they discover they can’t control all the news. That is what has happened to the White House. But it is more dangerous than that.

In what kind of country can the head of state punish you with imprisonment for revealing his illegal activities? Lots of answers come to mind. But none of them should be the United States of America. Many Americans would call that use of power un-American. I don’t think it is appropriate to use that term to describe the person holding the esteemed office of president of the United States. But nevertheless, Americans need to know that what the president is doing deserves our closest scrutiny.

Yes, security is important. But laws are laws. And, in the case of the Constitution, it is THE law. There are other ways of ensuring security: unannounced home inspections by federal agents; the confiscation of all guns from American homes; federal government control of the news media, businesses and local law enforcement; and uncontrolled, unannounced domestic spying. But it isn’t the threat of public backlash that prevents these policies from invading our lives (heck, if we aren’t supposed to find out about them, how could we protest?). It is the Constitution, and the basic laws and freedoms it guarantees. No one is above that. Certainly not a president.

President Bush should obey the law. But more important than that, President Bush should be stopped from using his power to silence those who seek nothing more than the security of our nation through the protection of that law, and the freedom that it provides. That is truly American.

Paul Woody is a first-year law student

at SLU Law. He is also the former

director of communications for the Missouri House Democratic Caucus