To spread democracy abroad, respect the law at home

[deadparrot]

WASHINGTON - When President Lyndon Johnson left the White House in 1969, he was so discredited that people said it would take the rest of the century to get the powers of the president back to where they were when he took office. What ruined Johnson was the Vietnam War, but more specifically the Gulf of Tonkin resolution. This was the response to what he said were North Vietnamese attacks on American destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin in August 1964. At Johnson's request, a compliant Congress passed a resolution providing in part:

"The Congress approves and supports the determination of the president, as commander in chief, to take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression."

Later, it developed that one of the alleged attacks in the Tonkin Gulf did not happen and the other was dubious. Congress repealed the resolution.

George W. Bush entered the White House in 2001 with an expansive view of the presidential power that Johnson had lost. The most important manifestation of this has now come with his assertion of the power to order warrantless intercepts of the communications of people in the United States suspected of connections with terrorist groups.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/yholt02x