California Conservative

That’s hardly news, but it’s a fact. In this news analysis piece, they start off wrong with a false premise and only get worse.

From the government’s detention of Americans as “enemy combatants” to the just-disclosed eavesdropping in the United States without court warrants, the administration has relied on an unusually expansive interpretation of the president’s authority.

Actually, the eavesdropping is what the NSA’s charter is about. Ed Morrissey at Captains Quarters writes:

The NSA has the authority to review international communications without warrants, in fact, that’s supposed to be part of its raison d’etre, and the definition of “international” as anything crossing an international border, including that of the US, might have policy implications but does not break the law.

In other words, the power to eavesdrop isn’t derived from Presidential war powers authority but from the law under which the NSA was created. It gets worse from here:

“Obviously we have to do things differently because of the terrorist threat,” said Elizabeth Rindskopf Parker, former general counsel of both N.S.A. and the Central Intelligence Agency, who served under both Republican and Democratic administrations. “But to do it without the participation of the Congress and the courts is unwise in the extreme.”

Please excuse Ms. Parker because she’s obviously getting her information from flawed reporting institutes like the NY Times and other Agenda Media outlets. As President Bush said in his weekly radio address, Congressional leaders, including the leaders of the House and Senate Intelligence committees, were informed of this, AND a review of the program is done every 45 days. That hardly sounds like an eavesdropping program done “without the participation of the Congress and the courts…”

William C. Banks, a widely respected authority on national security law at Syracuse University, said the NSA revelation came as a shock, even given the administration’s past assertions of presidential powers. “I was frankly astonished by the story,” he said. “My head is spinning.” Professor Banks said the president’s power as commander in chief “is really limited to situations involving military force, anything needed to repel an attack. I don’t think the commander in chief power allows” the warrantless eavesdropping, he said.

Mr. Banks’ head might well be spinning but I’d doubt that it’s because of this. It’s more likely that he’s a Democrat that can’t link. His comment that “the president’s power as commander in chief ‘is really limited to situations involving military force, anything needed to repel an attack.’” is archaic in light of the new nature of our attackers. It seems totally reasonable to think that the President’s ‘commander-in-chief’ powers apply here because he’s attempting to thwart terrorist attacks, not an oncoming charge of another country’s tanks.

When bin Laden’s hijackers flew those planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, it constituted as real an act of war as the Japanese attacks on Pearl Harbor. That we couldn’t declare war on a nation after 9/11 shouldn’t limit the President’s power to wage war against those who’ve declared war against us.

It’s also obvious that Mr. Banks is focusing on Presidential war powers authority as the authority being used for the eavesdropping when it’s the NSA’s power to do so that’s being used in that instance.

In the end, President Bush will win this fight because the law is on his side. As Captain Ed said, “The NSA has the authority to review international communications without warrants, in fact, that’s supposed to be part of its raison d’etre, and the definition of “international” as anything crossing an international border, including that of the US, might have policy implications but does not break the law.”

It’s time for the NY Times to stop mischaracterizing the eavesdropping issue. It sought to cast the Bush administration in a bad light while trying to hype their reporter’s soon-to-be-released book.

Unfortunately, they’ve omitted telling the whole truth on the issue, something that they’ve done all too frequently.

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRing

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 18th, 2005 at 8:59 am and is filed under Author: Gary Gross, Homeland Security, Law, Liberals, Terrorism, W. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.