ex libris Bush/Rove

From the UK's Independent:

"There is now a real lack of confidence in the Government's commitment to the rule of law ... if the executive has a lack of confidence in the judiciary then I think that lack of confidence is reciprocated."

He added: "Whenever there's an opportunity to stand up to the lynch mob, the opportunity is missed. More often than not, you find ministers behind the lynch mob egging it on."

Last week, Tony Blair repeated his threat to bring in new laws to curb the power of the judiciary after a High Court judge declared the Government's anti-terror legislation to be incompatible with the Human Rights Act. That prompted the former Home Office minister John Denham to warn of a " constitutional crisis".

The source, who only agreed to speak on condition of anonymity, said: " To describe the situation as a constitutional crisis and blame the judges for being responsible is a construct. I think it's a displacement action to deflect attention from ministers' own failings on to someone else. It helps to direct attention away from perfectly legitimate criticism of defects in the Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005.