Comments on: Specter: President’s Inherent Authority May Very Well Supersede FISA After All

By: Anonymous Liberal

Anonymous Liberal — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 03:19:36 +0000

Mark,

Specter’s op-ed flatly misstated a basic principle of constitutional law. He’s either very confused or intentionally dissembling. I actually suspect the former given his recently public statements. Either way, you shouldn’t take what he says as an accurate statement of the law. It’s not. Even Clarence Thomas wouldn’t agree with him on this point. Specter conflates inherent and exclusive authority. In the parlance of Youngstown, his op-ed doesn’t acknowledge the huge different between a catagory 2 situation and a category 3 situation.

Even the dissenters in Hamdan accept the Youngstown framework as controlling, so Specter is really out to lunch here. It’s embarrassing. For more, see my post.

By: jpe

jpe — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 02:35:27 +0000

Given that Specter is playing the nice lapdog, I really don’t see him as much of a fierce opponent. Why not add poor reasoning to a poor bill?

By: Mark

Mark — Mon, 24 Jul 2006 23:59:14 +0000

Shall I mark the two of you down as ‘opposed’?…

By: Andy Vance

Andy Vance — Mon, 24 Jul 2006 23:03:29 +0000

Should I even bother?

By: Fargus

Fargus — Mon, 24 Jul 2006 22:21:41 +0000

Is Specter’s admission really very remarkable at all, given his track record?

Nope. Not one bit.