Over the normal course of a criminal investigation, it is sometimes prudent to serve a search warrant in order to peek around someone's house for hard evidence to support said investigation. There are legal safeguards in place to protect Constitutional rights, and these are rules that average Americans have lived under for generations.

But in a classic case of "rules for thee but not for me", Congress is letting investigators know that they are not average Americans. Serving a warrant on one of the Congressional elite, no matter how much evidence there is backing it up, is a no-no. How dare you treat grand exalted Congressmen as mere citizens. At least that seems to be the thinking up on the hill.

When the feds raided the apartment of Rep. William Jefferson (D-LA) and uncovered $90,000 in bribe money stashed in his freezer, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle cried foul. Speaker Hastert went so far as to call the seizing of bribe money unConstitutional.

House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) expressed alarm at the raid. "The actions of the Justice Department in seeking and executing this warrant raise important Constitutional issues that go well beyond the specifics of this case," he said in a lengthy statement released last night.

"Insofar as I am aware, since the founding of our Republic 219 years ago, the Justice Department has never found it necessary to do what it did Saturday night, crossing this Separation of Powers line, in order to successfully prosecute corruption by Members of Congress," he said. "Nothing I have learned in the last 48 hours leads me to believe that there was any necessity to change the precedent established over those 219 years."

I think it's high time that Congressmen be subjected to the laws they force on the rest of us. Let Ted Kennedy be given extra scrutiny in the airport. Make Jim McDermott obey eavesdropping laws.

Those who make the laws should be expected to follow them just as we are expected to.

Both Democrats and Republicans "said the tactic was unduly aggressive and may have breached the constitutional separation of powers between the executive and legislative branches of government."

When I was in school, I was taught that we had a system of checks and balances. That Congress made the laws, while the Executive enforced the laws. I guess they don't teach that in private school.