George Will has a column today criticizing the Bush Administration’s defense of the NSA domestic surveillance program: No Checks, Many Imbalances. An excerpt:
[T]errorism is not the only new danger of this era. Another is the administration’s argument that because the president is commander in chief, he is the “sole organ for the nation in foreign affairs.” That non sequitur is refuted by the Constitution’s plain language, which empowers Congress to ratify treaties, declare war, fund and regulate military forces, and make laws “necessary and proper” for the execution of all presidential powers . Those powers do not include deciding that a law — FISA, for example — is somehow exempted from the presidential duty to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.”
The administration, in which mere obduracy sometimes serves as political philosophy, pushes the limits of assertion while disdaining collaboration.
Will ends the column by calling on Congress to amend FISA to make the NSA program legal: “It should do so with language that does not stigmatize what [the Executive Branch] has been doing, but that implicitly refutes the doctrine that the authorization is superfluous.”
Thanks to Crooked Timber for the link.