Via War and Piece
Marty Lederman
responds to a
response from Reagan/Bush I DOJ/OLC official Douglas Kmiec: " ... But let's not minimize the underlying offenses: No, they were not attempts to engage in third-rate burglaries, or to manipulate the Department of Justice, in order to influence the outcome of an election or to cover up such wrongdoing. (The U.S. Attorney and voter-fraud-fraud scandals are much closer to the mark on that score.) But the law being violated here -- FISA -- was much more important than the one being violated at the Watergate Hotel, and in some sense the threat to the Constitution is much greater here, too, because, pace the David Frost incident, Nixon did not actually think or argue that the break-in (or most of the cover-up) was legal, whereas the Bush/Cheney/Addington theory of the Constitution would quite forthrightly allow the President to disregard statutes and treaties whenever he thinks they get in the way of how he chooses to prosecute an international conflict. And, as in Watergate, all of this (the electronic surveillance, the torture, etc.) was done in secret, with no opportunity for the other branches or the public to apply the checks and balances that the Constitution contemplates. ... "
via
http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/006157.html
