Executive Authority

I hope the American people are sufficiently engaged to take note of the debate ignited by President Bush's Sunday night address. Conservative columnist George Will says Bush is grabbing too much executive power with the recently revealed domestic surveillance program. Will argues that our discussion should start with the 2002 Justice Department brief justifying W's power grab:

"Perhaps the brief argues, as its author John Yoo — now a professor of law at Berkeley, but then a deputy assistant attorney general — argued 14 days after 9/11 in a memorandum on 'the President's constitutional authority to conduct military operations against terrorists and nations supporting them,' that the President's constitutional power to take 'military actions' is 'plenary.' The Oxford English Dictionary defines "plenary" as 'complete, entire, perfect, not deficient in any element or respect.'

The brief should be declassified and debated, beginning with this question: Who decides which tactics — e.g., domestic surveillance — should be considered part of taking 'military actions'" ?

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