The NSA scandal in a post-Hamdan world

Glenn Greenwald, an NYC litigator and Constitutional attorney makes an excellent argument that,

Put simply, after Hamdan, there are no more excuses left for the President’s refusal to comply with the law.

Greenwald nicely advances the notion that the Bush Justice Department's legal defense for its warrantless eavesdropping boils down to only this weak and now debunked argument after the Hamdan Ruling:

(1) that Congress implicitly authorized the President to eavesdrop in violation of FISA when it enacted a resolution in September, 2001 authorizing the use of military force in Afghanistan and against Al Qaeda; and (2) that the President is constitutionally empowered to act as the "sole organ" with regard to national security, and nothing — not the Congress, nor the courts, nor the law — can limit or regulate those powers.

Greenwald further states,

[This] means that no government lawyer could possibly authorize the continuation of the warrantless eavesdropping program because the Supreme Court has rejected as invalid the only two legal bases which the administration previously cited to justify its warrantless eavesdropping.

Greenwald makes a great case for why every journalist (and American citizen for that matter),

...should begin asking the Justice Department every day what their legal justification for warrantless eavesdropping is now that Hamdan has rendered frivolous their prior legal arguments in defense of the President

Has Bush run out of excuses and had his hand slammed shut in the "cookie jar" or will he (Bush) continue his macho cowboy act and jeeringly advance his assault on the Constitution and our democracy?

http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/

"IF beings liberal means critical thinking and informed dissent instead of blind obediance and ignorant nationalism, then I am all for it!" -Frank J. Ranelli