Once elected, whether Republican or Democrat, the law has no meaning to them ...

... except as a tool of secrecy, wealth transference from the nation to a despotic few and oppression whenever needed to ensure compliance.

As Glenn Greewald writes:

... For decades, we had laws in place authorizing citizens to sue their telecommunication carriers if the telecoms allowed government spying on their communications in violation of the law, but when it was revealed that the telecoms did exactly this, the Congress simply changed the law retroactively so that it no longer applied. For decades, we had laws imposing civil and criminal liability on government officials who engaged in or authorized torture, but when it was revealed that our government did that, the Congress just retroactively changed the law to protect the torturers. And now that courts have ruled that our decades-old transparency law compels disclosure of this torture evidence, the Congress is just going to retroactively change the law -- again -- this time to empower the President to suppress that evidence anyway.

Other than creating an illusion of transparency and accountability, what's the point of having laws that purport to restrict what the Government can do if political officials just retroactively waive those laws whenever they want? ...

Obama makes noises about many things. Nice sounding noises. But his actions belies his pretty words. Where Bush just ignored the law to do his evil, Obama thinks of changing the laws retroactively to accomplish the same evil. And if you don't think hiding war crimes, torture, rape and murder is evil then why do we spend so much effort to capture and convict those who commit such actions who are not government protected?