Reply #49: There is no conundrum, not even in Bush's pea sized brain.. [View All]

He does not believe himself covered by any law and has totally ignored both the Constitution AND the law.

1) He HAS NO POWER TO DECLARE WAR. That power is reserved to the Congress in Article I of the Constitution.
2) Congress did not DECLARE WAR. Therefore he is not a "wartime" President regardless of what he calls himself.
3) Congress did not grant him warmaking powers in the United States even when specifically requested by the Bush Administration. See Tom Daschle's recent op-ed on this.
4) The President has NO unenumerated "magic" powers that are not explicitly listed in Article II Section 2 of the Constitution. His "Executive" power as listed in Article II Section 1 of the Constitution ONLY means the power to execute and enforce the laws AS PASSED BY CONGRESS.
5) All unenumerated powers (are reserved to the States and the People) as explicitly stated in the 9th and 10th Amendments of the Constitution. Therefore the President can not infer that he is entitled to any unwritten magic powers not written in Article II section 2.
6) A time of "war" does not give the President a "magic" get out of jail free card. The Founding Fathers were well acquainted with "times of war" and thought through the powers to be granted BY THE CONSTITUTION to the President with "times of war" already in mind. Read Federalist #69. PLEASE...
7) The President simply violated the black letter law and belongs in JAIL.

I am not a lawyer, but I am an intelligent well read person. I am an engineer and programmer by trade and yes I have a much better idea than most Americans exactly how the Bush administration used the NSA to collect millions of phone calls, emails, etc. They illegally swept up millions of communications and had software analyze it and put it into a coherent relational database of some sort so that the President and his subordinates could do whatever search they like on it be it:

SELECT * WHERE AL_QAEDA_MEMBER=1

or

SELECT * WHERE 'BUSH_SUPPORTER'=0

or

SELECT * WHERE (FIRST_NAME=JOHN) AND (MIDDLE_NAME='FORBES') AND (LAST_NAME='KERRY')

But - hey -since there were no warrants, then there probably isn't that much of a paper trail now is there? Very convenient...

Doug D.