We've heard this Washington song before

At one end of Pennsylvania Avenue, the incumbent Democrat in charge gives one of the government's front-line fighters of waste and fraud an hour to get out of town. At the other end, the incumbent Democrat in charge tells the loyal opposition to drop dead.

Just another day in the political paradise that is the Barry and Nancy Show.

President Obama's ultimatum to AmeriCorps Inspector-General Gerald Walpin was clearly a violation of the law requiring the chief executive to give Congress 30 days notice of an IG's imminent dismissal and a written explanation for the reasons why. Obama knew this because he co-sponsored the relevant law, but he axed Walpin anyway.

But the law is a mere inconvenience when you are the president and your wife is mad because said IG is making trouble for one of her good friends, who also happens to be an ardent supporter of your successful campaign for the White House. So the obvious solution is to fire the IG and forget the law, knowing a sympathetic media won't call you on it.

Having a guy like Norman Eisen in the White House also made firing Walpin easier for Obama. You gotta love Eisen's title - "Special Counsel to the President for Government Ethics and Reform." Evidently, "government ethics and reform" is another way of saying "law? What law?"

Not only does he deliver the president's greetings to Walpin, but Eisen also stepped forward recently with a White House proposal to ban lobbying on economic stimulus projects by professionals or "anyone else exerting influence on the process."

Why would the White House want to do that? Because, Eisen said, "we concluded this was necessary under the unique circumstances of the stimulus program." I guess Eisen's copy of the First Amendment adds "except under unique circumstances" right after it says "Congress shall make no law respecting freedom of speech ..." If Congess can't pass such a law, the executive branch isn't supposed to invent it, either.

The Walpin firing and anti-stimulus lobbying incidents make clear that this White House is quite willing to ignore the law or re-write it if need be, which makes Obama pretty much like most previous presidents. He's just a little more crude about it. All that heated Obama rhetoric during the 2008 presidential campaign accusing George W. Bush of flouting the law? Why, that was just for the fever swamp Lefties in San Francisco.

Meanwhile, at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi made history Wednesday by barring Republicans from offering any amendments to spending legislation. This has never been done before in the entire history of the U.S. House of Representatives.

This is the same Nancy Pelosi who said back in 2006 when she was House Minority Leader that "every person in America has a right to have his or her voice heard. No Member of Congress should be silenced on the floor ...guaranteeing that the voices of all the people are heard."

And this is the same Nancy Pelosi who, as House Minority Leader, said "bills should generally come to the floor under a procedure that allows open, full, and fair debate consisting of a full amendment process that grants the minority the right to offer its alternatives."

Neither Obama nor Pelosi is the first Washington politician to contradict themselves so flagrantly. They won't be the last, either. Politicians in both parties being human beings, the odds are great that contradiction, hypocrisy, fabrication, prevarication and insincerity will always be SOP in this town for all but an exceptional few.

And that is precisely why, friends and neighbors, it is utter lunacy to give these characters any more power than is absolutely necessary to defend the country, uphold contracts, and keep the criminals from mugging the rest of us, or worse.

Like Publius said, "if men were angels ..."

Mark Tapscott is editorial page editor of The Washington Examiner and proprietor of Tapscott's Copy Desk on washingtonexaminer.com.