Criticism rises from ex-Bush officials.

The Bush administration were always a regime of dangerous radicals who felt that the rules did not apply to them, and that seems to be the case even once they have left office.

Dick Cheney says President Obama's policies will make it easier for terrorists to kill Americans. Alberto Gonzales says the new attorney general could be undermining the morale of U.S. intelligence officials.

And Andrew Card, George W. Bush's first chief of staff, took Obama to task for allowing shirtsleeves and loose collars in the Oval Office -- arguing it was a clear departure from Bush's sterner sartorial rules.

The knives are already out just two weeks after Bush left the White House, as some of his closest friends and former aides begin lobbing sharp criticisms at the Obama administration.

The comments mark a departure from the rules of decorum that held sway during the final weeks of the Bush administration, when the departing president and his aides made a point of fostering a cordial relationship with the Obama team.

Normally, outgoing administrations make a point of never criticising the new president, but we shouldn't be surprised that this bunch of torturing, Constitution ignoring, partisan thugs have wasted no time in breaking with protocol.

"It's certainly unbecoming, especially for a former vice president," Thomas Mann, a scholar at the Brookings Institution, said in reference to the remarks by Cheney and others. "It reinforces the fact that there's a lot of bitterness about the low public standing of Bush and the administration as they left office, and the soaring standing of Barack Obama. A lot of these people are still caught up in these ideological battles and can't let go."

Clinton maintained his silence, even after right wing sources attempted to blame him for 9-11, and only broke it when Chris Wallace made the terrible mistake of bringing the subject up during an interview. Clinton, at that point, destroyed him, and the notion that Bush had been diligent on the subject of terrorism prior to 9-11.

But we shouldn't be surprised that the Bush administration lack dignity once out of office, nor that they refuse to behave as protocol demands.

They are, after all, what they have always been. Dangerous ideologues who believe that normal rules don't apply to them.

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Tags: Bush, Cheney, Obama, protocol, standards