“In my professional opinion, the NSA domestic surveillance program is as blatantly illegal a program as I’ve seen,” said Prof. Harold Hongju Koh, dean of the Yale Law School, at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on February 28.
Others disagreed. “I believe that the inherent authority of the president under Article II, under these circumstances, permits the types of intercepts that are being undertaken,” said former DCI R. James Woolsey.
The opening statements from the February 28 hearing on “Wartime Executive Power and the NSA’s Surveillance Authority” may be found here.
The view that the NSA surveillance activity is illegal was elaborated in a legal memorandum that was presented to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court last week by the Center for National Security Studies and the Constitution Project.
Also last week, Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV) introduced legislation to establish “to investigate the instances of warrantless wiretapping and spying on U.S. citizens by the National Security Agency and other departments of Government.”
The Administration has continued to push for further clean energy investments, but faces a difficult fiscal environment in Congress – which has meant shortfalls for many priority areas like funding for CHIPS and Science.
An analysis of the President’s FY25 budget proposal by the Alliance for Learning Innovation found a lot to like.
We’ve created a tool to monitor the progress of federal actions on extreme heat, enhance accountability, and to allow stakeholders to stay informed on the evolving state of U.S. climate-change resilience.
Wickerson was a few years into their doctoral work in material science and engineering at Northwestern University when the prospect of writing a policy memo with FAS cropped up at a virtual conference.