A question of unlimited powers (Kentucky Post)

[struggle4progress]

... When President Bush signed that ban last month, he added a disclaimer, saying that nothing in the ban affected his prerogatives in a time of national emergency to fight the war on terrorism how he chose. In other words, he reserved the right to torture even though Congress explicitly outlawed it.

And he used the same justification for bypassing the courts and ordering the National Security Agency to conduct warrantless eavesdropping on American citizens.

Bush also invoked this same authority to assert that he could hold U.S. citizens indefinitely, without trial or counsel, simply on his say-so ...

Surely Congress did not intend such broad and open-ended powers. When Congress returns from its recess, an early and essential item of business is for lawmakers to clarify what powers they did and did not intend the president to have in the war on terror. It is not a good precedent that the president has begun to attach disclaimers to laws with which he disagrees.

http://news.kypost.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060113/NEWS02/601130365/1014