Tuesday, December 20, 2005
Newsweek: the Constitution explicitly requires the president to obey the law.
From MSNBC/Neweek, Bush’s Snoopgate:
We’re seeing clearly now that Bush thought 9/11 gave him license to act like a dictator...No wonder Bush was so desperate that The New York Times not publish its story on the National Security Agency eavesdropping on American citizens without a warrant, in what lawyers outside the administration say is a clear violation of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
...the leaking...was the work of a patriot inside the government who was trying to stop a presidential power grab.
Bush was desperate to keep the Times from running this important story...because he knew that it would reveal him as a law-breaker...the Constitution explicitly requires the president to obey the law...the post 9/11 congressional resolution...did not scrap the Constitution and allow the president to do whatever he pleased in any area in the name of fighting terrorism.
What is especially perplexing about this story is that the 1978 [FISA] law set up a special court to approve eavesdropping in hours, even minutes, if necessary. In fact, the law allows the government to eavesdrop on its own, then retroactively justify it to the court, essentially obtaining a warrant after the fact. Since 1979, the FISA court has approved tens of thousands of eavesdropping requests and rejected only four...
If the Democrats regain control of Congress, there may even be articles of impeachment introduced...[T]he president knew publication would cause him great embarrassment and trouble for the rest of his presidency.
