Hightower Lowdown

George W insists that he has supreme power as commander- in-chief to spy on American citizens without following any stinking due process of law. Dick Cheney snarls that anyone who disagrees is a terrorist-coddler. Karl Rove snaps that Democrats who oppose Bush's spy operation are Osama lovers. Alberto "See No Evil" Gonzales told Congress that the president can by-damn make his own rules in wartime.

Wowlike hormoneaddled 14-year-olds, these guys are doing a high strut in hopes of intimidating their political enemies. But wait while the Bushites are looking to their left, look who's coming at them from the right. Bush's assertion of autocratic executive power is hardly a conservative principle, and a growing number of prominent rightwingers are howling that Bush & Gang are desecrating their movement.

"My criteria for judging this stuff is what would a President Hillary do with these same powers," says Paul Weyrich, the influential head of a right-wing think tank. And here's Repubguru Grover Norquist, who hates big government: "There is no excuse for violating the rule of law…Not to [get warrants before spying] appears to be an expression of contempt," he says.

David Keene, head of the American Conservative Union, is even more blunt: "Their argument is extremely dangerous in the long term, because it can be used to justify all kinds of things that I'm sure [neither] the president nor the attorney general has thought about. The American system was set up on the assumption that you can't rely on the good will of people with power."

Bruce Fein, a top legal official with Ronald Reagan, chimes in, "Bush's defenders are embracing the most liberal and utopian view of human nature with their 'trust me' argument. A view that would cause the Founding Fathers to weep." On this one, mark me down as siding with the conservatives.