Bush v. Science

David Johnston and Michael Janofsky write in the New York Times: "Some legal experts see Mr. Gonzales as little more than a surrogate for President Bush, whom he has served in a variety of capacities since 1997, when Mr. Bush was governor of Texas.

" 'Nothing in Al Gonzales's public statements, legislative proposals or anything else suggests that this is an individual who operates outside of the political gyroscope of President Bush,' said Bruce Fein, an associate deputy attorney general in the Reagan administration."

David G. Savage writes in the Los Angeles Times: "Ever since President Truman sent U.S. troops to fight in Korea in 1950, presidents have claimed broad wartime power to act without first seeking the approval of Congress. But they did so with the silence or implicit consent of lawmakers.

"Senators will convene today to confront the fact that in combating terrorism, President Bush has gone a step further."

Maura Reynolds writes in the Los Angeles Times: "The hearing's tenor rests on a central question: Do the Republicans who control Capitol Hill have greater loyalty to Congress as an institution or to the president who heads their political party?"

Any Limits at All?

Mark Hosenball writes in Newsweek: "In the latest twist in the debate over presidential powers, a Justice Department official suggested that in certain circumstances, the president might have the power to order the killing of terrorist suspects inside the United States."

Massimo Calabresi writes in Time: "As Capitol Hill prepares to battle the White House over George W. Bush's expanding war powers, moderate Senators on both sides of the aisle are quietly considering a range of options that would attempt at the very least to delineate the President's authority, if not roll it back. Bush's claims of wartime license are so great -- the White House and Justice Department have argued that the Commander in Chief's pursuit of national security cannot be constrained by any laws passed by Congress, even when he is acting against U.S. citizens -- that some Senators are considering a constitutional amendment to limit his powers."

History Lessons

Scott Shane writes in the New York Times about the "striking similarity to a drama that unfolded three decades ago in the capital: The 1975 Church hearings.

The National Security Archive reports: "Despite objections from then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and then-CIA director George H. W. Bush, President Gerald Ford came down on the side of a proposed federal law to govern wiretapping in 1976 instead of relying on the 'inherent' authority of the President because the 'pros' outweighed the 'cons,' according to internal White House documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act and posted on the Web today by the National Security Archive at George Washington University."

Margaret Ebrahim writes for the Associated Press that the documents "include one startling similarity to Washington's current atmosphere over disclosures of classified information by the media.

"Notes from a 1975 meeting between then-White House chief of staff Dick Cheney, Attorney General Edward Levi and others cite the 'problem' of a New York Times article by Seymour Hersh about U.S. submarines spying inside Soviet waters. Participants considered a formal FBI investigation of Hersh and the Times and searching Hersh's apartment 'to go after (his) papers,' the document said."

Libby Watch

David Johnston writes in the New York Times: "Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff told prosecutors that Mr. Cheney had informed him 'in an off sort of curiosity sort of fashion' in mid-June 2003 about the identity of the C.I.A. officer at the heart of the leak case, according to a formerly secret legal opinion, parts of which were made public on Friday.