LOL, aren't you the one that raised the specter of what you thought were "word games", back in #308??? And now you come to me and ask me to accept that when the court said "constitutional competence", it only meant that the President was really one smart cookie when it came to those tricky constitutional matters???
Sorry, I'm not buying it, your argument dashes itself to pieces against all logic and understanding of the meaning and use of the phrase "constitutional competence", see below.
COM•PE•TENCE n. 3. Law The condition of being legally qualified or admissible; legal authority or jurisdiction: the competence of a tribunal.
Now either the author of the Truong decision, Judge Harrison L. Winter, the Chief Judge of the Fourth Circuit, having 16 years experience on the federal bench, a graduate of John Hopkins College and the University of Maryland Law School and a former Deputy Attorney General of Maryland, was a complete buffoon, or else by "constitutional competence", he meant the obvious, that the President had "constitutional authority" to conduct that foreign intelligence intercepts without a warrant.
When the court added the phrase "not always" to their decision, they were specifically referring to the facts of the instant case wherein an investigation that had began as an exclusively intelligence matter, eventually changed to a criminal investigation, and for that the Truong court held that then the President was required to obtain a warrant.
The point here being, and what the Truong decided, was that for the exclusive purpose of foreign intelligence gathering, the President has the inherent constitutional authority to conduct warrantless searches.
Incorrect, their warrant exception for the President relied on the President's constitutional competence", i.e., the President's constitutional authority.
"In sum, because of the need of the executive branch for flexibility, its practical experience, and its constitutional competence, the courts should not require the executive to secure a warrant each time it conducts foreign intelligence surveillance."
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Incorrect, as the Keith case made abundantly clear, there exists a major constitutional distinction between warrantless wiretaps for gathering domestic intelligence gathering, versus wiretaps for gathering foreign intelligence gathering. The former was held by the Keith court to be an unconstitutional usurpation of authority, while the latter was held by later courts, to be within the President's constitutional authority, even duty.
Most definitions of the word in the legal sense focus only on qualifications or admissibility, in the sense that certain legal conditions are met in order that a certain type of action may be taken, or that a certain type of authority may be exercised. I know of no case where the word has been understood to mean or imply exclusive authority. And considering the momentous implications it would have to say that the President can not come under Congress's regulations, when Congress is given explicit power to regulate the government, any statement to that effect from a court would have to be unmistakably clear.
When the court added the phrase "not always" to their decision, they were specifically referring to the facts of the instant case wherein an investigation that had began as an exclusively intelligence matter, eventually changed to a criminal investigation, and for that the Truong court held that then the President was required to obtain a warrant.
Once the character of the investigation changed from foreign intelligence to law enforcement, the court's statement about foreign surveillance would no longer apply at all. So there was no reason why the court had to say "not always" if foreign-intelligence surveillance was always exempted from the 4th amendment. If your interpretation of what it said is correct, then it much more likely would have said, "that Executive Branch need not obtain a warrant for purely foreign intelligence surveillance". Same number of letters as in "always", and much more precise, if indeed you've read the court correctly.
inquest: "As I explained, his powers over domestic law enforcement are no less constitutionally sacred than his powers over foreign policy."
Incorrect, as the Keith case made abundantly clear, there exists a major constitutional distinction between warrantless wiretaps for gathering domestic intelligence gathering, versus wiretaps for gathering foreign intelligence gathering. The former was held by the Keith court to be an unconstitutional usurpation of authority, while the latter was held by later courts, to be within the President's constitutional authority, even duty.
Usurpation of whose authority? Who else but the executive branch would be setting wiretaps domestically?
Domestic law enforcement is no less part of his powers than foreign policy. In fact, law enforcement is a responsibility explicitly assigned to him by the Constitution; foreign policy is not. Earlier you were chiding me for allegedly wanting to set up a "two-tiered" system of the President's powers, but now you expressly contradicted me when I said there is not a two-tiered system of his powers.