BuCheney's push for monarchical powers could lead to war crimes charges

This could mean big trouble for Chimpy and company.

No wonder it is taking awhile for the administration to digest this ruling. It is choking on it.

The Fight Over Presidential Power - Newsweek Politics - MSNBC.com:

Administration officials and Washington lawyers are still digesting the text of the ruling, but it is already becoming clear that it could have ripple effects that extend far beyond the trial of Hamdan and other Guantanamo prisoners. The president has long argued that Congress granted him wide-reaching powers in the days after 9/11, when it passed a resolution authorizing him to use military force against the perpetrators of the attacks. But in his ruling, Justice Stevens took a much narrower view of the president's wartime powers, rejecting the administration's argument that military commissions of the kind Bush had created were covered by the resolution. Now other antiterror programs that the president has justified by invoking the same congressional resolution might be vulnerable to serious legal challenge. Some legal scholars and current and former administration officials believe the case could undermine the secret foreign detention centers and the NSA eavesdropping program, two cornerstones of the terror war. 'This is an extremely damaging decision for presidential power,' says a former senior administration lawyer, who asked for anonymity owing to his intimate involvement in the legal wrangling over prisoner treatment. 'And it was largely a self-inflicted wound.' The bitter irony: an administration determined to expand executive power may have caused a serious contraction.