The use and abuse of executive power

Good column by Jonathan Rauch on the Bush administration’s expansive (to say the least) understanding of executive power during wartime.

Key point here:

The Civil War, World War II, and, to a lesser extent, the Korean War were intense, acute conflicts. Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Truman believed they were taking emergency measures during a conflict that they expected to be short. When it became clear that the Civil War would drag on, Lincoln went to Congress for the 1863 Habeas Corpus Act, formally legalizing his detention policy. Lincoln understood that he could not run a long war on a fly-by-night basis.

Bush, in contrast, seems determined to treat the war on terror as a permanent emergency. The administration says the 2001 use-of-force resolution allowed the government to collect battlefield intelligence here at home, superseding FISA. Invoked immediately after an enemy attack, that argument makes legal and strategic sense. Warrantless domestic surveillance and legal improvisation seem fine for four days, four weeks, or even four months.

But four years — with no end in sight? Bush seems to have had no intention of regularizing his surveillance program by building a legal framework for it. Instead, his plan apparently was to run a secret domestic spying program outside the boundaries of conventional law for, well, how long? Decades? Forever? (Read the rest…)