A roaring ovation

I can’t watch George Bush’s State of the Union addresses: they’re even worse for my health than Health Savings Accounts. But this morning’s L.A. Times tells me that the President received a roaring ovation last night for, well,  breaking the law and lying about it:

President Bush received a roaring ovation Tuesday for his prime-time defense of wiretapping phone calls without warrants. But Bush's explanation relied on assumptions that have been widely questioned by experts who say the president offers a debatable interpretation of history...

... However, warrantless surveillance within the United States for national security purposes was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1972 — long after Lincoln, Wilson and Roosevelt stopped issuing orders. That led to the 1978 passage of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that Bush essentially bypassed in authorizing the program after the Sept. 11 attacks.

....The president echoed earlier administration assertions that the domestic surveillance program would have been useful before the Sept. 11 attacks. Bush said two Sept. 11 hijackers living in San Diego made telephone calls to Al Qaeda associates overseas, but that "we did not know about their plans until it was too late."

However, The Times has previously reported that some U.S. counterterrorism officials knowledgeable about the case blame an interagency communications breakdown, not a surveillance failure or shortcomings of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Based on what you know about Presidents -- oh, heck, what you know about human nature -- let me posit a question. When someone gets a roaring ovation for lying, or for breaking the law, would you guess they’ll do less of it in the future?