By Charlie Savage, Globe Staff | January 24, 2006
... ''These efforts might enable Mr. Bush to prevail in the court of public opinion, but his repeated declarations that the NSA program is legal does not make it legal," said Timothy Lynch of the libertarian Cato Institute. ''The transcendent issue is this idea that the president can choose which laws he's going to follow and which laws he's not." ...
And the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania, said on CNN yesterday that Bush was required by law to brief every member of the intelligence committee, not just its leaders ...
Martin Lederman, a former Justice Department official in the Clinton administration who now teaches law at Georgetown University, said the memo .. fails to overcome the long history of Congress passing laws that establish the ground rules for how presidents run the military. Moreover, he said, the memo presents no evidence that Congress intended to waive the 1978 surveillance law when it authorized Bush to use force against Al Qaeda ...
By refusing to back down, Bush is essentially telling Congress either to impeach him or let him be, <Bruce Fein, a former Justice Department official in the Reagan administration> said ...
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2006/01/24/bush_launches_a_bid_to_justify_domestic_spying/?page=2