Posted on 01/20/2006 8:12:54 PM PST by NormsRevenge
WASHINGTON - Democratic senators took the Bush administration to task Friday for four years of domestic spying, while the president fought back with a planned embrace of the intelligence agency that is carrying out the effort.
In preparation for Senate hearings, Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts noted that President Bush asserted in 2004 that "when we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so."
That Bush statement came at the same time the National Security Agency was engaging — at the president's direction — in warrantless eavesdropping on Americans.
"If President Bush can make his own rules for domestic surveillance, Big Brother has run amok," Kennedy said in a statement.
Introducing a proposed Senate resolution, Kennedy and Sen. Patrick Leahy (news, bio, voting record) of Vermont rejected White House assertions that congressional action after Sept. 11 authorized warrantless eavesdropping inside the United States.
A joint resolution of Congress authorized the use of force against those responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks, but it "says nothing about domestic electronic surveillance," Kennedy declared.
Pushing back, Bush plans a Wednesday visit to the NSA, where he will reassert his claim that he has the constitutional authority to let intelligence officials listen in on international phone calls of Americans with suspected ties to terrorists.
"We are stepping up our efforts to educate the American people," White House press secretary Scott McClellan said of the trip to the NSA, based at Fort Meade in Maryland. McClellan called the program "a critical tool that helps us save lives and prevent attacks. It is limited and targeted to al-Qaida communications, with the focus being on detection and prevention."
Sen. John Cornyn (news, bio, voting record), R-Texas, said the new audio tape of Osama bin Laden threatening attacks on American soil "is a vivid reminder why we must continue to intercept communications between al-Qaida overseas and potential operatives in the United States."
On Monday, deputy national intelligence director Mike Hayden, who led the National Security Agency when the program began in October 2001, will speak on the issue at the National Press Club.
On Tuesday, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is delivering a speech on the program in Washington.
Gonzales also plans to testify Feb. 6 about the secret program before the Senate Judiciary Committee where Kennedy and Leahy are members.
Meanwhile, the Justice Department on Wednesday issued a 42-page legal justification for the eavesdropping program, an expanded version of a document the agency sent Congress last month.
"Making their argument longer didn't make it any better," said Rep. Chris Van Hollen (news, bio, voting record), D-Md., a Judiciary Committee member. He said Bush's secret approval of warrantless eavesdropping had made congressional debate on the Patriot Act meaningless.
The NSA's warrantless eavesdropping program is "an intelligence operation in search of a legal rationale," said George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley.
"What the president ordered in this case was a crime," added Turley, who said House Republicans are establishing a terrible precedent by not holding oversight hearings.
To fend off criticism, Deputy White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove and White House spokesman Scott McClellan referred to statements by John Schmidt, a Clinton administration associate attorney general who defended the program.
Schmidt wrote last month in the Chicago Tribune that Bush's authorization of the NSA surveillance is consistent with court decisions and Justice Department positions under prior presidents.
Rep. John Conyers (news, bio, voting record), the House Judiciary Committee's top Democrat, and other Democrats met in a basement room of a House office building Friday to hear a panel of lawyers and activists discuss whether Bush had committed an impeachable offense.
The NSA's warrantless eavesdropping program is "an intelligence operation in search of a legal rationale," said George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley.
"Scolds" is a perfect term for them.
When the facts come out in the Senate Hearings next month, very few Americans will conclude that electronic eavesdropping on international phone calls between known enemies of America and someone within our borders.
Just wait until the facts come out about how this program outed the terrorist who was plotting to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge... The Democrats have reached rock bottom and they refuse to stop digging
Jonathan Turley is a strange duck. I've heard him come out with some common sense stands and some that are downright weird. At the start of the Afghanistan war he did a column stating something to the effect that all enemy combatants captured should have the full benefit of the U.S. Courts. It didn't seem to matter to him that they were terrorists.
Democratic senators took the Bush administration to task Friday for four years of domestic spying,...
This is an editorial trying to pass itself off as news.
Pathetic MSM drivel.
Exactly, these are the same people that are touting their new gun ban legislation in direct violation of the 2nd amendment. The ACLU is guilty of this as well.
And .. do you know why they were meeting in the basement ..??
It seems that right after the repubs took back the Senate, the dems continued to try to hold hearings - which they are not allowed to do - not as far as the legitimate hearing rooms are concerned. Once while the dems had a hearing in progress, Frist's head aide - called the office of the dem who was holding the hearing and told the dem's staffer what he was witnessing on his closed circuit TV - the dems acting like they were the chairman of the committee and holding hearings; calling witnesses, etc. Frist's aide politely told them STOP IT - and he better not see that happening again!!
This forced the dems to take to the basement to hold their PHONEY HEARINGS - still with no authority to call witnesses or any such stuff. But .. C-SPAN continues to support their little PHONEY HEARINGS because it's more hate-Bush garbage.
How many times can they jump the damn shark?
That wasn't just a hearing today...I listened to it...it was a "mock trial"...and Turley was the first one to use the impeach word...
2 words will suffice..
take your pick. ;-)
Pete Yost
Amalgamated Propaganda
Gosh...it looks like the "plantation workers" were having a televised meeting to take out the "massa"....LOL
As many times as it takes...to get back into POWER, in their world.
If the caller or the callee is not in the USA, how is it domestic?
So, we have to get approval from the black-robed bureaucrats?
Say, I got an idea...why don't we all just tie our own hands and feet and give the keys to the White House to Osama. Won't that be fun?
Bush spied terrorist died!
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