Our forefathers created a system of government built on checks and balances that they envisioned would protect a free people from abuses of their privacy, their property and their liberty at the hands of anyone, especially anyone in public office.

They never intended for an imperial presidency to rise above the legislative and judicial branches of government, for they had their fill of kings and emperors who ruled with absolute power in the old world. They knew that absolute power corrupts absolutely.

They wanted none of this, and wrote a Constitution and Bill of Rights to enshrine the protections they knew were needed to keep Americans free and democracy healthy.

They crafted a system of government rooted in the principle that citizens have rights and presidents violate those rights at their own peril.

Let us review the bidding as the dark year 2005 fades:

President Bush admits that he secretly ordered the government to eavesdrop on American citizens, without recourse to the established legal methods of doing that. He declares that he had and has the right to do so. Says who? Well, he says so, and Vice President Cheney says so, and his attorney general, Alberto R. Gonzales, says so too.

Some legal scholars beg to differ, arguing that the president has violated federal law and has opened himself to impeachment for high crimes and misdemeanors. They contend that he trampled the Constitution in a bid to expand the powers of the executive branch and conduct the war on terrorism.

This is the same president, the same administration, that under cover of the same wartime power grab declared their right to detain prisoners outside the court system in secret foreign prisons and the right to use inhumane and degrading measures in interrogating those prisoners in violation of the Geneva Conventions.

In ordering the National Security Agency to intercept phone and e-mail traffic of American citizens, members of the administration chose not to avail themselves of a secret federal court established nearly 30 years ago to provide the government the means to secretly investigate anyone believed to have ties to foreign governments or movements that threaten the United States.

They say it is too cumbersome and slow to seek warrants from that court - even though the court has granted such warrants in more than 17,400 cases and only rejected them four times. They say they must move more swiftly - even though the law permits them to eavesdrop for 72 hours before seeking a warrant that is routinely and quickly granted.

Some suggest that the Bush administration's real reason for cutting the secret court out of the loop is that some of the information they are basing the secret wiretaps on was gotten through torture. The court warned early on that it would not permit information gotten through extra-legal or illegal methods to pervert the American court system.

Congress passed the law creating the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court precisely because another president, Richard Nixon, bent the intelligence agencies and the entire government to his will in pursuing those he considered his enemies. If you made the Nixon enemies list, then your phones were tapped, your comings and goings watched, your tax returns audited.

How big a leap is it from ignoring the rule of law in pursuing foreign enemies to pursuing and punishing domestic enemies, those Americans who for political reasons or reasons of principle oppose your aims?

The president and his vice president and his attorney general are saying, essentially, trust us. We won't use our extra-legal powers against ordinary Americans. We just want to protect you from further terrorist attacks. Trust us. We are honorable men who have nothing but your well being at heart.

Sorry. That won't cut it. They have all the legal tools any president needs already on the books for our protection. Congress makes the laws. The judiciary interprets them. The president and all the rest of us live by them.

George W. Bush is not the emperor of America or the king of the 50 states of the union. He, like us, must live by the rule of law. He is bound by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. In the end, he works for us.

As Ben Franklin wrote more than two centuries ago: "Those who would give up essential liberty in the pursuit of a little temporary security deserve neither liberty nor security."