Privacy concerns are not trivial. The Constitution protects against "unreasonable" searches. But even with law enforcement, where the main function is ex post prosecution, there are numerous exceptions to the Fourth Amendment's warrant requirement. Yet Congress insists still on micromanaging the president — and he, by failing to assert his authority early on, is now reduced to bargaining with Congress over minutia that will soon be as obsolete and dangerous as the underlying act is today.

John Locke, put it well when he observed that the foreign affairs power "is much less capable to be directed by antecedent, standing, positive Laws, than [by] the Executive." The Federalist's authors, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay, all agreed. The remedy for executive incompetence or recklessness in foreign affairs is political — not legislative, much less legal. Congress, to say nothing of the courts, can no more manage such affairs than it can the economy.