Authority and Legitimacy

In our first chapter, Bardes, Shelley and Schmidt discuss authority and legitimacy. We can readily find these these concepts in contemporary news stories. Here is one example from Thursday's New York Times:

Administration Lays Out Legal Case for Wiretapping Program
By ERIC LICHTBLAU
WASHINGTON, Jan. 19 - The Bush administration today offered its fullest defense of the National Security Agency's domestic eavesdropping program, saying that congressional authorization to defeat Al Qaeda after the Sept. 11 attacks "places the president at the zenith of his powers in authorizing the N.S.A. activities."

In a 42-page white paper, the Justice Department expanded on its past arguments in laying out the legal rationale for why the N.S.A. program does not violate federal wiretap law and why the president is the nation's "sole organ" for foreign affairs.

The defense comes at a critical time in the administration's effort to quell the growing political uproar over the N.S.A. program. House Democrats will be holding their first hearing Friday on the legality of the program, and the Senate Judiciary Committee has scheduled another hearing in two weeks. A number of legal analysts, meanwhile, including those at the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, have questioned the legality of the program in strong terms.

The Justice Department's need to write a white paper, the statement that "The defense comes at a critical time ... to quell the growing political uproar..."

Relating those passages to the text would be the basis for a paper.