Well, he’s on something.  In attempting to defend the President’s NSA actions, Bill Kristol offers up this moronic sentence:

This is presumably one reason why President Bush decided that national security required that he not simply follow the strictures of the 1978 foreign intelligence act, and, indeed, it reveals why the issue of executive power and the law in our constitutional order is more complicated than the current debate would suggest. It is not easy to answer the question whether the president, acting in this gray area, is "breaking the law." It is not easy because the Founders intended the executive to have — believed the executive needed to have — some powers in the national security area that were extralegal but constitutional.

Ah.  How desparate are we, Bill?  We’ve had to invent a new concept and a new word here.  "Extralegal".   

Sadly, even the worst lawyer on Earth will tell you that the Constituiton is the Supreme Law of The Land.  In fact, the Constitution itself says that it is the Supreme Law of the Land.  The Founders (as conservatives once argued) wanted a limited federal government, and the Constitution was an expression of that limitation. 

But conservative Kristol is arguing, apparently with a straight face, that the Founders created a Constitution with the intent of having the President be able to ignore it.  Such a proposition is ridiculous.  But even if true, why didn’t the Founders just say that within the Constitution?  Why instead did they express that the Constitution is the supreme law of the land?

Hit & Run fisks Kristol further here.