this pretty well lays out why Bush/Gonzolas are full of male bovine fecal excrement...good read...
http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/forumy/2005/12/not-authorized-by-law-domestic-spying.phpNot Authorized By Law: Domestic Spying and Congressional Consent
JURIST Guest Columnist Jordan Paust of the University of Houston Law Center says that contrary to assertions by President Bush and the US Department of Justice, post-9/11 Congressional legislation on the use of military force against terrorists does not authorize domestic spying...
George W. Bush and US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales claim that domestic spying in manifest violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) was authorized by Congress in broad language in the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) regarding persons responsible for the 9/11 attacks. Similar claims have been made in a December 22 letter from Assistant Attorney General William Moschella to the leaders of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees. The claims are patently false.
First, there is no persuasive evidence that when passing the AUMF Congress intended to override either criminal or other . Second, the AUMF contains no express or implied authorization concerning intelligence surveillance either abroad or within the United States. With respect to Executive action against certain persons, the purpose of the AUMF is clearly contained in the authorization to use merely “necessary and appropriate force” against those “nations, organizations, or persons” that “planned, authorized, committed, or aided” the 9/11 terrorist attacks as such or that “harbored such ... persons.” The authorization of appropriate “force” is not an authorization to torture or to use cruel, inhuman, degrading, or humiliating treatment against any human being; it is not an authorization to create military commissions that are otherwise without jurisdiction under constitutional and international law and violate due process; and it is certainly not an authorization to spy on persons within the United States. Moreover, Congress has only authorized use of “appropriate” force. The word “appropriate” creates a statutory limitation that necessarily requires Executive compliance with relevant constitutional, international, and other federal laws, especially since Supreme Court opinions have long recognized that relevant international law and prior federal statutes are a necessary background more generally for interpretation of newer federal statutes.
Indeed, under Article II, Section 3 of our Constitution the President has an express and unavoidable duty to faithfully execute the “Laws” and has no power to violate them. As Richard Nixon learned, presidential authorizations to violate the law are, in the words of the House Judiciary Committee, “subversive of constitutional government.” Additionally, since 1800 Supreme Court opinions have recognized the power of Congress to limit certain Commander in Chief powers during actual war (see, e.g., 43 Colum. J. Transnat’l L. 811, 842 n.114 (2005)), such as the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, but the Commander in Chief power does not apply outside of an actual war and the United States cannot be at “war” with al Qaeda as such (see, e.g., 28 Yale J. Int’l L. 325, 326-28 (2003)). In his letter Assistant Attorney General Moschella seriously misread the Prize Cases (1863) by ignoring the fact that the Supreme Court expressly referred to two early federal statutes that “authorized ...
bound” the President, demonstrating another instance of congressional power to regulate portions of the Commander-in-Chief power even during actual war. Moreover, any so-called inherent presidential authority to spy on Americans at home (perhaps of the kind denounced in Youngstown (1952) and which no strict constructionist should pretend to recognize), has been clearly limited in the FISA in 18 U.S.C. § 2511(2)(f) and 50 U.S.C. § 1809(a)(1), as supplemented by the criminal provisions in 18 U.S.C. § 2511(1).