Nate Nagel wrote:

By your standards the founding fathers were UECs then. People
defending their own land from oppression (as they see it.)

Yep. But it's not my standard. The United States Supreme Court coined the
phrase "unlawful enemy combatant." How to deal with spys and the like
captured on the battlefield has been worked out over thousands of years of
military conflict and belligerents have converged, through countless
trial-and-error methodologies, on the most practical solution. It's called
the Black Flag.


I also submit warrantless wiretapping and Cheney's "unique"
interpretation of the status of the Vice Presidency as examples of
blatant disregard for the rule of law. The scary thing is that I
suspect it will take years if not decades to discover just what all
this administration has done that we don't know about yet.



The first intercepts of enemy electronic communications took place during
the Second War of Independence when both the Union and Confederacy tapped
the opposing side's telegraph lines. In every war since, reading the enemy's
mail, so to speak, has been an accepted and necessary practice.

Not only enemies, but potential enemies. We were working on, and broke,
Japanese codes long before they attacked Pearl Harbor. We had the diplomatic
code cracked by December 7th, 1941. Had we had equal success with the
Japanese naval code, we could have averted disaster.


Warrants are authorized by the 4th Amendment, but the president's authority
to wage war is covered by Article II of the same constitution. The courts
have unanimously said, over the centuries, that the president's war-making
responsibility trumps the 4th Amendment.

As for Cheney, there's an interesting Op-Ed in today's NY Times on the
constitutional role of the Vice President.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/27/op...nk&oref=slogin