Gene Lyons just doesn't qualify for the Big Pundit club. He doesn't stick to the official scripts. Thank God for that! In Will the real conservatives please stand up? Arkansas Democrat-Gazette 02/15/06, he observes, "The Bush administration, however, appears hell-bent on provoking a constitutional confrontation" over the illegal NSA spying program.
And Lyons isn't impressed with the unilateral Executive theory (aka, unitary Executive theory):
In essence, the Bush White House pretends that the congressional resolution giving the president the authority to use force against the perpetrators of 9 / 11 enables him to set aside any laws he deems inconvenient and to put the U. S Constitution on indefinite hold. Or that even if Congress intended no such thing, the president’s powers as commander-inchief trump the Bill of Rights anyway. It’s as tortuous and inside-out an argument as it’s possible to imagine, to all intents and purposes establishing the president as an elected military dictator. ...
Does the White House really intend a Politburo-style purge of individuals within the national security agencies who place their loyalty to the Constitution above their fealty to Bush ? Would federal courts enforce subpoenas compelling editors and reporters to testify about whistleblowers who leaked information that the president was arguably violating the FISA law ? It seems highly unlikely they would. Contrary to easy rhetoric, the Valerie Plame leak investigation provides no useful precedent. It’s about protecting a whistleblower, former Ambassador Joe Wilson, from retribution for pointing out that the administration had used bogus intelligence about Iraq. Is it really al-Qa’ida the White House wants to fight ? Or have domestic opponents become the preferred enemies ? Meanwhile, where are the conservatives ? The real ones, I mean. (my emphasis)
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