FT: Bubba Bush Gets a Taste of Free Speech -- In Oz

"President George W. Bush was heckled on Thursday in the Australian parliament and responded to his rare encounter with dissent by declaring: 'I love free speech.'

For a president who typically speaks to controlled crowds of Republican supporters at home and is shielded abroad from protesters who tend to be kept a safe distance from the motorcade, the two Green party members of parliament who stood up and barracked Mr Bush made for one of the president's very few head-on confrontations with public criticism."

The FT report gives a candid, and somewhat startling, image of a Bubba president entirely out of touch with world sentiment, going even so far as to suggest that Bubba Bush is shielded from domestic dissent. This suggestion is more than credible.

But one thing that is more ominous is the lack of comment in the US media on this subject. Some vague references in the mainstream press about political harangueing around the Patriot Act or Ashcroft's probe of the Plame lack, but nothing in the press that tells your average Bubba "Hey, Bubba, your government is destroying the Constitution." It's not clear that Bubbas give a hoot about the US Constitution, as long as gas prices stay down and they can drive their SUVs anywhere they want.