Imagine the hysteria at the New York Times if the Ashcroft Justice Department had issued formal legal guidance with such a title! Is there any doubt that we’d be hearing horrific reminders of Watergate, “torture memos,” and “domestic spying”?

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Alas, this is the title of the formal guidance issued by the CLINTON Justice Department in 1994, to which I referred last evening.

The Office of Legal Counsel Opinion, written by then-Assistant Attorney General Walter Dellinger to then-White House Counsel Abner Mikva, is available online here. Evidently, presidential power — including the authority to ignore statutory restrictions that would curtail the President’s inherent power to collect foreign intelligence information and protect national security — was worthy of vigorous defending when it was being wielded by a Democrat.