"Why would it take 24 hours? All it should take is couple phone calls. "Mr. Atty Gen, one of our agents in the field has reason to believe..."
Uh, wrong again. It is NOT as simple as a series of phone calls. A phone call wouldn't cut it. Lawyers have to sign off on this. A lawyer would NEVER sign off on something without reading and understanding it. As I stated before it must go through NSA lawyers, then DOJ lawyers, and then the AG. Then we can start listening. Maybe it won't take 24 hours. Maybe it will "only" take 1 hour. In either case the result is the same. We will have missed an opportunity to listen in on a conversation with a known terrorist if we followed your idea to its logical conclusion. The NSA often needs to act with ZERO delay. Fortunately both the Constitution (Article II Presidential powers) and even FISA itself (with its statutory exception) allows for warrantless surveillance in a time of war.
Great, then we don't have anything to worry about.
Are we technically at war?
50 USC § 1811. Authorization during time of warAttorney General Gonzales made sure to assert that we are not in a state of war, that the AUMF being an authorization us use military force is something different from that.Notwithstanding any other law, the President, through the Attorney General, may authorize electronic surveillance without a court order under this subchapter to acquire foreign intelligence information for a period not to exceed fifteen calendar days following a declaration of war by the Congress.
I think the "AUMF results in a 'statutory grant of authority' (or avoids violation of statutory law) for the NSA program" has a number of pitfalls for the administration, but they are making the argument.