News of the Day: Death of Outrage?

So, Pres. Bush secretly ordered the NSA to eavesdrop on U.S. citizens, within the United States. Now, the story coming out of the administration is that these were people with ties to terrorists, but . . . the gang that can't shoot straight has based its actions on bad intelligence before. And keep in mind that a number of the administration's terrorism prosecutions have failed to secure convictions. So when they say, "ties to terrorists," I think one should discount that.

President Bush said yesterday that he secretly ordered the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans with suspected ties to terrorists because it was "critical to saving American lives" and "consistent with U.S. law and the Constitution."

Link.

We've heard this a thousand times. "What we're doing is consistent with the law." But apparently, the administration thinks that anything it does is legal. So, well, that's not much of a check on executive power.

Bush's constitutional argument, in the eyes of some legal scholars and previous White House advisers, relies on extraordinary claims of presidential war-making power. Bush said yesterday that the lawfulness of his directives was affirmed by the attorney general and White House counsel, a list that omitted the legislative and judicial branches of government. On occasion the Bush administration has explicitly rejected the authority of courts and Congress to impose boundaries on the power of the commander in chief, describing the president's war-making powers in legal briefs as "plenary" -- a term defined as "full," "complete," and "absolute."

Link.

This story should trigger widespread outrage. But it's time for one (mostly) silent group to step up. Conservatives. If conservatives can't find any outrage in themseles over this story, then the movement is really dead. If conservatives circle the wagons and defend an unlimited assertion of executive power . . . are they really "conservative" any more?