Taking liberties with presidential power

An interesting debate is occurring among the DC chattering class and run-of-the-mill political junkies about the effort inside the Bush administration to dramatically expand presidential power. The nomination of Samuel Alito, who pathologically defers to the executive on all matters of dispute between the president and Congress, makes this issue of even greater importance. Coupled with the recent revelation of the far-reaching domestic surveillance program under way, a robust debate should take place. By now it's clear that the president broke the law in establishing the domestic surveillance program. The question is now whether he was right or wrong to do so.

There are differing arguments about whether the administration would have obtained the authority to conduct surveillance if it had sought the approval of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance court judges. This clipmonkey will assume that the administration would NOT have been given the authority because there often isn't any evidence of an actual crime, but merely communications with suspected terrorists. On this matter I'm willing to give the president the benefit of the doubt. Indeed, if you are corresponding with Al Qaeda, I believe our intelligence agencies, with the support of the president, have a responsibility to find out what you're up to.

However, when an administration hides behind "executive privilege" in refusing to hand over documents related to its response to Hurricane Katrina (while everyone else is handing over even their most embarrassing bits of information), it becomes clear that this expansion of presidential power is not an effort to keep us secure. In fact, it is an effort merely to keep the jobs of Republicans in the administration and in Congress secure. This is not protecting us from terrorists. This is shameful.