Oooo, what a givaway.

Molly Ivans and others have long commented on President Bush’s hatred of lawyers and civil lawsuits. As governor of Texas he did everything he could to make it more difficult for people to sue. But suing It is about the only way American Citizens have of ensuring the government abides by any of the thousands of laws its legislators have passed. The civil and criminal courts, along with the popular vote, are the only ways our citizenry can weild authority over those in charge.

The tendency for some people to sue because they can’t get a lap dance in the specific location of the strip club they frequent should not obscure that fact.

But now, buried in a speech about Bush’s new national-forest logging proposal, is a great explanation of why “enemy combatants” don’t have access to the courts — and why you can expect your access to the courts to be significantly curtailed as well.

You see, Bush doesn’t think courts are the places where Americans sort out right from wrong. He thinks courts are a place where people air their opinions. He thinks it’s all well and good for people to vent for a while, but when it interferes with business, that’s just got to stop. Oh. But here’s his own words (polished, I’m sure, before they were published here at whitehouse.gov):

And we have a problem with the regulatory body there in Washington. I mean, there’s so many regulations, and so much red tape, that it takes a little bit of effort to ball up the efforts to make the forests healthy. And plus, there’s just too many lawsuits, just endless litigation. We want to make sure our citizens have the right to the courthouse. People ought to have a right to express themselves, no question about it. But there’s a fine balance between people expressing their selves and their opinions and using litigation to keep the United States of America from enacting common sense forest policy.

So, folks, the court is your own personal ranting space. Not, as you may think, someplace you go when the US Government tries to commit some crime against you or your communities.

That’s something both liberals and conservatives should take careful note of. Tolerate it, and it’ll come back to bite you both.