When President Obama said concerning those war crimes committed during the Bush administration - and about the federal felonies committed by those who engaged in warrantless surveillance of Americans’ communications - that there should be no accountability for the crimes because, in his words, we should look forward and not back, he dangerously contributed to the further deterioration of the rule of law in our nation.

His virtual granting of immunity, notwithstanding the requirement in the Convention Against Torture that all signatories must prosecute torture as they do other serious offenses, is completely contrary to all applicable laws - and characteristic of a dictator who believes that he is the law.

It is another major ratcheting up of the imperial presidency - and another momentous degradation of the rule of law and our constitutional system, in which the president and other members of the Executive Branch are to be constrained by the law and by the other two branches of our government. That evisceration of the rule of law by President Obama and a Congress that has timidly fallen in line with the assertion by the Bush and Obama administrations of unprecedented executive powers take us one more giant step closer to the tyranny our Founders sought to prevent.