Flashback - Feingold Moves to Censure Bush

[slipslidingaway]

http://www.thenation.com/blog/feingold-moves-censure-bush?page=0,0,0,5

"U.S. Senator Russ Feingold on Monday asked the Senate to officially censure President Bush for breaking the law by authorizing an illegal wiretapping program, and for misleading Congress and the American people about the existence and legality of that program.

...Charging that the President's illegal wiretapping program is in direct violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) – which makes it a crime to wiretap Americans in the United States without a warrant or a court order -- Feingold argues that Congress cannot avoid facing the fact that fundamental Constitutional issues are at stake.

"The President must be held accountable for authorizing a program that clearly violates the law and then misleading the country about its existence and its legality," says Feingold. "The President's actions, as well as his misleading statements to both Congress and the public about the program, demand a serious response. If Congress does not censure the President, we will be tacitly condoning his actions, and undermining both the separation of powers and the rule of law."

...When it was revealed in December that, despite previous denials by the president and his aides, Bush had repeatedly authorized a secret program by the National Security Agency to listen in on Americans' phone calls, Feingold charged that the spying scheme was indicative of a "pattern of abuse" by a president who was "grabbing too much power."

[Lasher]

1. Five years ago...

Junior, and particularly Lord Vader, should have been put in chains for that alone. But ever since Nixon and his cronies got a pass for their transgressions, US Presidents have been above the law.

[slipslidingaway]

3. Yes they should have, but turning a blind eye is they new normal ...

:(

http://original.antiwar.com/glenn-greenwald/2011/10/31/americas-elites-look-out-for-each-other/

"...Leading members of the Democratic Party were implicated in various ways. In July 2008, the reporter Jane Mayer was asked in a Harper’s interview why there was so little push by Democrats — the “opposition party” — for investigations into Bush programs of torture, warrantless eavesdropping, and the like. She pointed out that one “complicating factor is that key members of Congress sanctioned , so many of those who might ordinarily be counted on to lead the charge are themselves compromised.”

Indeed, key congressional Democrats were contemporaneously briefed on what the Bush administration was doing, albeit often in vague and unspecific ways. The fact that they did nothing to stop the illegal plans, and often explicitly approved of them, obviously gives leading Democratic officials an incentive to block any investigations or judicial proceedings. In December 2007, the Washington Post reported that back in 2002 the CIA had briefed a bipartisan group of congresspeople on its use of waterboarding and other torture tactics. That group included the ranking members of both the Senate and House intelligence committees: Jay Rockefeller and Nancy Pelosi. Yet, reported the Post, “no objections were raised. Instead, at least two lawmakers in the room asked the CIA to push harder.”

Similarly, several leading Democrats, including Rockefeller and Representative Jane Harman, were told that the Bush administration was eavesdropping on Americans without warrants. Rockefeller did nothing to stop it, and Harman actually became the administration’s leading defender: after the illegal program was revealed by the New York Times, she publicly stated that the wiretapping was “both necessary and legal.” Two years after he coauthored the story revealing the Bush NSA program, New York Times reporter Eric Lichtblau revealed that Harman had attempted to convince him not to write about the program on the ground that it was so vital. Appearing on MSNBC in June 2008, the law professor Jonathan Turley pointed out the logical result of this bipartisan support for the crimes..."

[Scuba]

2. And to think this man was replaced by a total moron. n/t

[slipslidingaway]

4. Hard to believe! n/t