No Defense

For Bush spying on US citizens without a warrant.

Bush's most extreme defenders actually concede that he violated the law, but they insist that the president has inherent authority to ignore or break any law that restricts his authority as commander-in-chief under Article II of the Constitution. This is a radical extension of the arguments about unilateral presidential power championed by former Justice Department official John Yoo, a defender of the Bush surveillance program, and David Addington, Dick Cheney's chief of staff. But no court has ever suggested that the widely respected FISA law might be an unconstitutional infringement on the president's constitutional authority, and no president before Bush has had the audacity to press such an absurd claim.