Experts ponder Bush's rationale / Some wonder why law wasn't changed instead of circumvented by administration
"Abraham Sofaer, a former legal adviser to the State Department during the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations, said he didn't understand why the existing procedure requiring warrants was inadequate, given that the court rarely refuses such requests, can grant them within hours, or even minutes, and allows surveillance for 72 hours without a warrant in special circumstances.
While wartime necessity has historically granted presidents enormous leeway even in the face of congressional and legal obstacles, Sofaer warned that the rationale is open to abuse.
'Necessity relates to emergency, and it's always a special exemption to the law,' said Sofaer, now a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. But, he added, 'to issue an executive order over and over again to set up a special way of doing something, I don't consider it a necessity.'"
- posted by geoff @ #