Bush, Cheney, Schwarzenegger and the Party of Law and Order

Arnold Schwarzenegger was riding his Harley-Davidson with his son in a sidecar last month when he collided with an SUV. The governor required 15 stitches in his upper lip. After the accident, it emerged that Schwarzenegger has been riding his motorcycles for 20 years without the required motorcycle license. He ''never,'' he said, ''thought about it.'' For various reasons -- among them the fact that no cop saw the accident -- the governor wasn't ticketed.

Dick Cheney went gunning for quail without the Texas stamp required to hunt upland game birds. In a Sunday hunting accident, Cheney hit -- in addition to several pen-raised quail -- a septuagenarian millionaire lawyer, sending him to an intensive care unit with pellets in his face, neck and chest. Cheney's office blamed the stamp screw-up on whatever Texas bureaucrat failed to tell Cheney's people about the stamp. Cheney got a warning, and promised to send a $7 check to buy the stamp after the fact.

George W. Bush has been eavesdropping on Americans without court orders or warrants. He didn't get them because he figured he didn't need to.

Anyone sense a pattern here?

(Ronald Reagan's future attorney general Edwin Meese, along with future CIA director William Casey, were ticketed by the LAPD for jaywalking near Reagan's headquarters just after their guy won the California primary in June 1980. The men ignored the tickets. By 1985, the tickets had turned into arrest warrants. Meese, by then the chief law enforcement officer in the land, avoided arrest by sending a belated check for $103.50. Whatever Casey did about his warrant is unknown, and presumably classified ...)