Conservatism and the Bush bunch.

Bob Ban', a former Republican congressman from Georgia who served as one of the House impeachment managers during Bill Clinton's impeachment trial in the Senate, has become an outspoken critic of the Bush administration's "Homeland Security" agenda. He has been particularly vehement in condemning the administration's use of warrantless wiretaps, a policy he describes as an assault on the rights protected by the Fourth Amendment.

At the recent Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington, Barr--once a darling of the Beltway "right"--was treated as an apostate and heretic. Barr was on hand to debate former Bush administration legal adviser Viet Dinh, who helped compose the so-called Patriot Act.

"Do we truly remain a society that believes that ... every president must abide by the law of this country?" asked Barr during his opening statement. "I, as a conservative, say yes. I hope you as conservatives say yes." This exhortation, reports the Washington Post, was greeted by "deathly" silence by the audience, which was much more receptive to Dinh's effort to "carve out a Bush exception to their ideological principle of limited government."

"The conservative movement has a healthy skepticism of governmental power, but at times, unfortunately, that healthy skepticism needs to yield," pontificated Dinh. While Barr insisted that the central issue in the debate was "whether or not we will remain a nation subject to and governed by the rule of law or the whim of men," Dinh insisted that true conservatives are willing and eager to trust Bush: "None of us can make a conclusive assessment as to the wisdom of that [wiretapping] program and its legality, without knowing the full operational details. I do trust the president when he asserts that he has reviewed it carefully and therefore is convinced that there is full legal authority."

Dinh, like other supposed Bush-era conservatives, inverts Jefferson's familiar warning that "in questions of power ... let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution." Dinh obviously views Bush as so trustworthy that, unlike other men, he does not need any constitutional restraints. On the other hand, Barr holds to the pre-Bush era conservative view. "Whether it's a sitting president when I was an impeachment manager, or a Republican president who has taken liberties with adherence to the law, to me the standard is the same," Barr told the Post.