Today's New York Times features yet another analysis of the legality of terrorist surveillance by the NSA and the Bush Administration defense of it. Power Line has pertinent observations. In their view the President is on firm legal ground.
John notes the article's failure to come to terms with the case law unanimously recognizing the president's inherent constitutional authority to conduct warrantless domestic surveillance for foreign intelligence purposes, let alone the international surveillance at issue in the NSA program.
John notes that the article acknowledges the 2002 decision of the FISA appellate court stating:
We take for granted that the President does have that authority and, assuming that is so, FISA could not encroach on the President’s constitutional power.
The Times, however, misrepresents the FISA appellate court's statement and simply omits the court's recognition that "FISA could not encroach on the President's constitutional authority." In other words, if FISA encroached on the president's constitutional authority, FISA would be unconstitutional...
By the same token, however, and to the same extent, James Risen, Eric Lichtblau and everyone else at the Times involved in the publication of the NSA surveillance story have engaged in conduct violative of the federal espionage laws. Yet the Times has never even acknowledged its own legal jeopardy. John concludes with a point close to my heart:
[I]t is worth mentioning that Lichtblau and Liptak purport to sit in judgment on the legality of the administration's conduct, without ever noting the fact that Lichtblau and the Times itself unquestionably violated federal law by publishing leaks about the NSA program. In the world of the antique media, illegality requires no explanation if it is directed against the Bush administration.
Every word the Times now publishes about the NSA surveillance story is deeply compromised by a conflict of interest that the Times has yet to acknoweledge.
Emphasis is Power Line's.
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