I think we just have a fundamental disagreement as to what the law allows. To me, under the current law, the govt is allowed to listen to any call made by Osama or any other AQ operative from abroad. What this new program does is allow the govt to listen to any call made FROM the US by citizens to overseas on the grounds that the guy might have some connection to AQ.
IOW, lets say AQ calls Ahmed in Brooklyn. Under the current law the govt can listen to that call. But, absent a warrant, they can't listen to every call Ahmed or anyone remotely connected to Ahmed places to an overseas number. Also, since there's no review, I'd wager they've been doing some purely domestic ops as well.
The key difference wrt the law is WHO placed the call, imo. ALL calls placed by AQ people overseas are covered. Calls placed from within the US by someone need some sort of review.
As for necessary and appropriate, I think it's necessary and appropriate to close the borders and kick out all illegals and conduct racial profiling and plenty of other measures, but you don't see the WH saying they have authority to do that.
The Pres has plenty of war power and there's plenty more he could do without this. IMO, he hasn't used his war powers enough in going after the insurgency and has been a it soft on them. But that's another issue.
No. That isn't the issue. What the statute actually prohibits is any phone call between an overseas al Qaeda operative and a US citizen in the US.
But as a practical matter the federal statute also prevents the President from intercepting a phone call between an al Qaeda operative overseas and any US phone number, irrespective whether the person is a US citizen or a foreigner. That's because it creates a Catch-22. He can't intercept the call unless he knows that it does not involve a US citizen, but he can't know that until after he's already intercepted the call.