"Grumble as political opponents regularly do, the American Presidency has always been an enormously powerful executive office and every President has been intensely aware of this"

I think many historians and political scientists, as well as lawyers, will disagree with this assertion.

They will probably agree, however, that the American Constitution did not contemplate a King, above and beyond the law.

Desperate times sometimes call for desperate measures, and Lincoln, as the best example, stretched his powers (e.g., by suspending habeas) to preserve the Union. In such instances, history is the final judge.

Mostly, though, America has not bought the Nixonian theses that when the President does it, it is not against the law.

I cannot know for certain--none of us can with absolute assurance--that history will condemn Bush's assertion, with the support of his legal minions, that the Commander in Chief power trumps all provisions of domestic and international law. But I am as confident of it as I can be on any such controversial matter.

The implicit assumption of Bush, his lawyers, and this commentator that other branches of government cannot be trusted to join in protecting American security is obscene.

The concern that future presidents may try to avail themselves of precedents for executive power-grabs set by this Administration is a realistic concern, and it is one of the reasons such power grabs must be resisted, now and forever.

As another commentator has suggested, better that extraordinary measures be taken, if at all, in open violation of the law, with forthright executive acknowledgment and attempted justification and taking of both political and historic responsibility, than that our entire structure of law and shared and separated powers and responsibilities be undermined forever. --The Wise Bard