Presidential Powers

The L.A. Times has an excellent piece describing the presidential powers under question during the Senate committee hearings.

At its core, the Administration argues that based upon a brief piece of legislation authorizing the President to go after Al Queda, the President has nearly unlimited powers as long as they can be construed as at least tangential to to his pursuit of terrorists.

During the hearings, Gonzalez cited the Hamdi case in which the Supreme Court ruled that the administration had the power to indefinitely detain U.S. citizens based upon the Use of Force authorization. He argued that the surveillance measures would be viewed similarly because they are "less intrusive."

- Murphy