''What the President Ordered in This Case Was a Crime" - The Nation

[Wind Dancer]

Excellent article!

-snip-

"Last month all 17 House Judiciary Democrats called on Chairman Sensenbrenner to convene hearings to investigate the President's use of the National Security Agency to conduct surveillance involving U.S. citizens on U.S. soil, in apparent contravention of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. As our request has since been ignored, it is our job, as Members of Congress, to review the program and consider whether our criminal laws have been violated and our citizen's constitutional rights trampled upon," explained Conyers, who has played a critical role in investigations of wrongdoing by Democratic and Republican presidents since the days when Lyndon Johnson occupied the White House. "We simply cannot tolerate a situation where the Administration is operating as prosecutor, judge and jury and excluding Congress and the courts from providing any meaningful check or balance to the process."

Members of Congress who attended the hearing -- Conyers and a half dozen other Democrats -- heard George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley refer to the wiretapping ordered by Bush as ''an intelligence operation in search of a legal rationale." Without a doubt, Turley added, ''What the president ordered in this case was a crime," said Turley, who bluntly told the gathering that Sensenbrenner and other House Republicans have set a dangerous precedent by refusing to permit oversight hearings.

Turley's comments on the troubling nature of the president's wiretapping initiative -- and the failure of House Republicans to aggressively investigate and challenge that initiative -- were echoed by Bruce Fein, who served as a deputy Attorney General for the Reagan administration. In addition to suggesting that the implausibility of Bush's claim that he was acting within the law should be self evident, Fein warned presidential powers must always be regulated in order to halt abuses of the moment and to prevent the development over time of an imperial presidency that can no longer be checked by Congress.

The Conyers hearing had an impact on the members who bothered to attend it. Representative Jerrold Nadler, D-New York, the senior Democrat on the Judiciary Committee's panel on the Constitution, responded to the testimony by announcing that the Judiciary Committee needs to explore whether President Bush should be the subject of an impeachment inquiry for high crimes and misdemeanors stemming from his authorization of illegal spying.

Sensenbrenner might well disagree with that assessment. He has every right to such a sentiment. But he does not have a right to prevent the Judiciary Committee as a whole from entertaining these most fundamental questions about the abuse of presidential power. If Sensenbrenner does not recognize this standard, then he has no place chairing the committee that is charged with taking the lead in the application of Congressional checks and balances -- up to and including impeachment -- as an antidote to executive excess.

-more-

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0124-26.htm

[geiger]

1. momentum is growing....

[Tellurian]

2. Just repeat what the infamous HENRY HYDE kept repeating:

when the House voted to IMPEACH Prez Clinton:

"NO ONE IS ABOVE THE LAW!" (including the President!)

[Wind Dancer]

3. They are hypocrites, every last one of them.

The radicals that control every branch of the government believe they can change the laws, break the laws or ignore the laws. The arrogance and "f**k you" attitude will eventually cause these greedy elites to collapse, I just hope we all don't go down with them. It's a scary time in history and John Conyers, as usual, is leading the way to expose and prosecute these criminals.

Repeat -
"NO ONE IS ABOVE THE LAW!" (including the President!)

[Tellurian]

4. The silence of the demo leadership is deafening! nt

n/t

[Talismom]

5. I think we and they (neocons) are all wondering when they will

have gone too far and woken up the sleeping tiger--the angry, independent-minded and strong-willed american public. I worry about what the neocons will have ready to use against us and how much we will have to loose before it happens. Great post FDinNC!