It's getting radical out there. As Glenn Greenwald makes clear, the Bush Administration is essentially taking the Judge Dredd approach to the Constitituion: I am the Law:

The truly radical nature of the Administration's position is illustrated by the fact that it is forced to argue that FISA itself – to the extent it "impedes" the President's power to eavesdrop on American citizens – is unconstitutional. For 30 years, FISA has existed as the framework for regulating eavesdropping by the Government. It was enacted by Congress as a response to serious abuses of this power, signed into law by the President, and nobody serious ever argued that it was unconstitutional. Indeed, the working assumption of both the Congress and the Bush Administration in the wake of 9/11 was that FISA would continue to regulate the Administration's eavesdropping, which is why The Patriot Act amended FISA in the aftermath of 9/11 (p. 27, fn. 13).

But the Administration is engaged in a full-frontal assault on anything which can be used to argue that George Bush's wartime powers are limited in some way. That means that if FISA is seen as such a limitation, then the Administration asserts that it can ignore and violate FISA because it suddenly believes it to be unconstitutional.

It seems like they're going to go to the mat on this one; the President can do anything in the name of defending the Nation. Anything. And any law which might stand in his way is constitutionally invalid. Somehow this isn't what I imagine Jefferson, Madison and company really had in mind. Then again, they never wanted us to have an empire either, so we've been off the rails for a while now, but I digress.

While I don't really think this shit will fly, it's indeed depressing to see how poorly the Press deals with the issue, and how weak Bush's political opponents remain even in the face of his striking unpopularity and obvious wrongness.

So we'd better get started moving those goalposts, because this game we're playing here is for suckers.