Checks and Balances in Wartime

Jonathan Alter has a good article in Newsweek about the debate over Constitutional authority for the President with the recent NSA eavesdropping news story. Alter argues the United States is facing a major constitutional crisis, but not enough people in and out of Congress are doing enough to confront it. Alter also goes after the Democrats, who he argues have not been coherent on the issue and need to work with the Republicans to resolve the issue. He also writes about the Alito hearings and how he believes Alito is too deferential to executive power as he writes:

Alito embodies the inherent contradiction of the conservative movement. The nominee is an "originalist," which means, as he said last week, that "we should look to the meaning that someone would have taken from the text of the Constitution at the time of its adoption." But at that time, the 18th century, the Founders could not have been clearer about the role of Congress in wartime. As James Madison put it, "In no part of the Constitution is more wisdom to be found than in the clause which confides the question of war and peace to the legislative and not to the executive branch."

Click here to read the entire article.

For more on this issue, click here.

Also check out two New York Times op-eds entitled The Bugs in Our System and Back When Spies Played by the Rules

--Tom Hayes