The bizarre thing about the spying on Americans scandal is how seriously people are taking the Bush administrations assertions that they have that power. Most Republicans are basically taking the line, "oh, well, it's basically just a clerical error that it's not in the Constitution." The Democrats and some Republicans, on the other hand, are responding with, "oh no, you've made a slight error in your reasoning." The proper response is to laugh in the face of the hapless Bush minion making the claim, possibly spraying your beverage all over him. These aren't arguments that are on shaky ground; this is nonsense, it's pure fantasy. The Bush administration's ability to read this so-called presidential power in the Constitution makes the "judicial activism" of Earl Warren et al. look like Scalia's textualism 1 . The worst part is the way Congress is (not) reacting, letting themselves be enslaved to cowardice 2 and partisanship to the detriment of us all.