His Royal Highness, George I, Ruler of the Realm, Potentate of the Potomac, Accomplisher of Missions, has deigned to inform us that the controversial Patriot Act authorizes Himself, as Supreme Commander of the Combined Combat forces of the Republic, to order any action that His exalted personage sees fit, regardless of extant laws, in order to protect us from possibility or suggestion of attack by any and all those seeking to undermine our glorious Democracy, Long Live the King.

George I, in this, the final month of the fifth year of His reign, issued His proclamation during His pre-holiday audience for members of the press, assembled at the White Palace to grovel at his feet for their seasonal scolding in lieu of temporarily proscribed waterboarding or fingernail removal.

The Connecticut-born Texan chastised one quivering, equivocating questioner who valiantly if vainly ventured to suggest an "overstepping" of His divinely received authority when He authorized the tapping of telephones and eavesdropping upon emails of any citizen of His choosing at any time and for as long as He, in His infinite insight, sees fit, Long Live the King.

Said intercepts are, it is revealed, being conducted by the once super-secret National Security Agency, which has been monitoring (and occasionally translating, when such personnel have been available) foreign communications since the Cold War, which most assume to have ended more than a decade ago, thereby leaving many skilled agents with valuable skills and lamentably few opportunities, until recently, to demonstrate them anew.

His Majesty cautioned the cowering correspondents on the carpet before Him that the Act, approved overwhelmingly by legislators, empowers Him to employ "all necessary force" to fight terrorism as He chooses. The hero of the defense of his adopted Lone Star State during the Viet Nam War (It was indeed not invaded on his watch.), reprimanded the recoiling reporters beneath Him that the Act gives Him license to deploy electronic "intercepts" as merely another "weapon" of choice, as merely another inventory item of his arsenal which includes the cruise missile, the Abrams tank, the F-sixteen fighter jet, the B-52 long-range bomber, depleted-uranium and phosphorous shells and the five-hundred pound bunker-buster bombs, so sayeth He, the King.

One quaking questioner inquired why the President hadn't merely availed His Exalted Self of the provisions of FISA, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, law of the land since 1978, which establishes procedures for the arranging of wiretaps, etc. via easy authorization from a panel of judges specifically appointed to oblige Him whenever He perceives the need to have citizens spied upon. In its history, the court has rarely denied such requests, not even from those legally elected presidents who served before His judicial elevation.

He enlightened us in His most recent weekly Sunday Sermon, however, that as a wartime Commander in Chief, He is not required to obey all laws. Nor is there anything in the Almighty Patriot Act itself stating that He may not exempt Himself from any law whenever He may see fit to do so.

(Said Patriot Act, as we are enlightened by our sage Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez -- selfsame author of the various torture authorization treatises -- supersedes our more than two century old US Constitution, a parchment document after all, and written with quill pens.)

The Supreme Ruler thanked His audience for attending to His pronouncements, admonished them go forth and disseminate His wisdom, and to avoid following the example of those colleagues who had seen fit to expose His latest secret stratagems, also to subject themselves to deserved penance and obligatory self-flagellation. He then returned to His private quarters, there to await further guidance from the Heavens and to change wardrobe for his daily mountain-bike excursion around the South Lawn. Long may He reign.