As this morning’s New York Times analysis put it in describing the rationale behind the Adminstration's violations of Foreign Intelligence Security Act, pursuant to which it has been secretly spying on the commuincations of American citizens without judicial warrants:


A single, fiercely debated legal principle lies behind nearly every major initiative in the Bush administration's war on terror, scholars say: the sweeping assertion of the powers of the presidency.

From the government's detention of Americans as "enemy combatants" to the just-disclosed eavesdropping in the United States without court warrants, the administration has relied on an unusually expansive interpretation of the president's authority.


As the Times reports, Bush's claim to absolute executive power has its origins principally in one document:



a Sept. 25, 2001, memorandum [by the Justice Department’s John Yoo] that said no statute passed by Congress "can place any limits on the president's determinations as to any terrorist threat, the amount of military force to be used in response, or the method, timing and nature of the response."