Is anything Bush does surprising anymore?

To get at the heart of how much Bush and his GOP allies in Congress have changed the office of POTUS, Sen. Whitehouse (D-RI, ironic name, eh?) decided to dig in to the classified legal memos that have given "justification" to the president's, uh...liberties with the Constitution. The results are as sickening as you'd expect:

1. An executive order cannot limit a President. There is no constitutional requirement for a President to issue a new executive order whenever he wishes to depart from the terms of a previous executive order. Rather than violate an executive order, the President has instead modified or waived it.

2. The President, exercising his constitutional authority under Article II, can determine whether an action is a lawful exercise of the President’s authority under Article II.

3. The Department of Justice is bound by the President’s legal determinations. [bold emphasis added throughout]

I don't know if/why this is surprising. Bush believes he can direct the emphatically-independent arm of oversight -- the Justice Department -- not to pursue legal investigations of wrongdoing in his administration, and that the Court itself is not able to tell him what he's doing is illegal.