OK, you've all seen the story by now. George W. Bush thinks he's got the right to peek through your mail without a warrant.

Now, nobody who reads this blog can possibly be a stranger to signing statements at this point. We've been reading about them for a long time. We've even debated a bit about what they really mean, legally and practically. That is, legally speaking, they may not turn out to offer the Bush "administration" any protection if and when they do the things they are purporting to reserve the right to do. But practically speaking, they give every indication that they may in fact be doing those things, and doing them unchallenged. Which tends to take a bit of the shine off of the more optimistic legal view.

But as we've sailed past the 800 mark in terms of how many of these signing statements Bush has issued, and may well be on our way to 1,000 and beyond, they're beginning to take on an additional meaning, beyond the legal and practical. They're taking on a symbolic meaning, although it might actually be true that they were meant to have this meaning all along. And that symbolic meaning is that they demonstrate that Bush is reserving for himself the right to do anything. He just keeps planting stakes further and further out, noting well that nobody's really willing to set boundaries. Don't challenge me, he says, because I'll make you prove you can make it stick. That's how I measure power. If you can't physically restrain me from doing these things, you can't stop me.

It violates the law? Who cares? Have a signing statement. The government's being sued? Who cares? We'll appeal forever. Lose the appeals? Who cares? We'll just change the terminology or continue in secret. Investigated by Congress for it? Who cares? We'll just flood them with irrelevant documents. Subpoenaed to testify? Who cares? We just won't show. Cited for Contempt? Who cares? We'll appeal forever (if we even permit the U.S. Attorney to prosecute in the first place).

It's not just the sheer number of these signing statements anymore, but now, as this latest example illustrates so well, it's also the sheer audacity of them that gives them their potency. A declaration like this one, on top of similar declarations (that received similarly poor receptions) on warrantless surveillance of telephonic communications, is clearly a declaration that this president is frontally challenging basic privacy assumptions held by nearly everyone in America. It is a declaration of his belief, however poorly founded, that he is "Commander in Chief" of everyone and everything, so long as he can claim that in the end, it was all for our own good.

It is also, I think, a declaration that Bush makes with one eye on our "table," noting what's not on it, and knowing full well what it is that Congressional Democrats don't want to put there. That's something I think we can say with some confidence at this point, without even having to get into the wisdom of either side's strategy. He knows what Democrats are reluctant to do, and why. By the same token, Democrats know (to some extent, anyway) what crazy things he'll be willing to try as a result. Things that, frankly, it's hard to believe won't "wrongfoot" him with the great majority of the American people, to borrow a phrase. And sure enough, he's doing them. Though I'm not sure anyone fully anticipated a move this far out of step with American values. But maybe we should have.

When you're dealing with an "administration" that believes: 1) that the Constitution affords the president vast "inherent powers" that are unstated in the document, but extend to every facet of governance, and; 2) that the current state of the law and legal precedent that says otherwise is simply wrongly decided, you're gonna have problems. And a lot of those problems are not dissimilar to the kind you'd have trying to dissuade a certifiably delusional mental patient of his affliction. Except in this game, the suits are more expensive.

Have you ever seen The Madness of King George?

There's a great scene in which Dr. Willis, who eventually "cures" George III of his illness, muses aloud:

Do you know, Mr. Greville, the state of monarchy and the state of lunacy share a frontier? Some of my lunatics fancy themselves kings. He... is the king. Where shall his fancy take refuge?

How do you tell the difference between a "resolute" president, and one who's just lost his mind? Everyone who can say no to him has said no to him, in the strongest ways that normal people recognize as being within bounds -- at least in the game of government. And the president's response?

All I need is the support of my wife and my dog.

Who says something like that? Well, someone who lives in enough of a bubble that they can shut out the "noes." And who lives there?

Dr. Willis knows:

Well, who's to say what's normal in a king? Hmm? Deferred to, agreed with, acquiesced in. Who can flourish on such a daily diet of compliance? To be curbed... stood up to... in a word, thwarted, exercises the character, elasticates the spirit, makes it more pliant. It's the want of such exercise that makes rulers rigid.

Sounds familiar.