Antipitas said:
Even if the resultant crime is a felony? Interesting.
The US Congress is a separate, co-equal branch to the Executive, not a superior branch. As a Federal Court opined:
"The Truong court, as did all the other courts to have decided the issue, held that the president did have inherent authority to conduct warrantless searches to obtain foreign intelligence information. ... We take for granted that the president does have that authority and, assuming that is so, FISA could not encroach on the president's constitutional power."
Just as the Executive Branch does not have the authority to write legislation, the Legislative Branch does not have the authority to criminalize the exercise of Executive Power in the realm of Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the United States.
Antipitas said:
We are at war with an idea. That idea has a name: Terrorism. It is a specific type of terrorism in that it is religious based. It is, in short, a war that can never be won. There is no single country we can attack. There is no single political ideal that can be countered. The moderates of this religion are in fear. They fear speaking out, because they fear their own fellows, more than they fear repercussions of the country wherein they reside.
That "idea" slaughtered thousands of innocent people in New York, DC, and Pennsylvania, and many more around the world during the years in which this nation was treating such attacks as merely individualized criminal matters outside the purview of the military intelligence establishment, instead of treating them as an organized, concerted, well-financed war waged by foreign powers against our nation.
One often hears about the idea of "fighting the last war" - that seems to be exactly what you're doing here by pointing out that there's no single country we can attack.
So what if there's not? We are attacking the ringleaders, their finance networks, their communications, and their covert operatives here in the US instead of making the "last war" mistake yet again, and the result has been the steady stamping out of al-Qaeda and related terrorist groups and their state sponsors, the emergence of pluralistic government in former terrorist strongholds, and a complete absence of attacks on US soil.
Antipitas said:
It seems as if the majority of Americans are more than willing to give up some essential Liberties for the hope of some supposed safety.
Is the fact that the Brooklyn Bridge is still standing "supposed?"
Does an enemy agent covertly operating in the US, plotting a major attack, have an "essential liberty" of entirely secret communications with his handlers and financiers overseas?
