http://news.yahoo.com/s/huffpost/20060102/cm_huffpost/013144_200601021014David Wallechinsky Mon Jan 2,10:14 AM ET
President George W. Bush began the new year by telling the American people that his NSA domestic surveillance program was only used to monitor communications between members of al-Qaeda and people in the United States. He did not address the issue of why he deemed it necessary to bypass the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) that had, for 24 years, been reviewing and approving such surveillance programs. When the story first broke, President Bush and his staff claimed to have done so because it took too long to obtain a warrant. This lame excuse fell apart within hours when it was revealed that the law already gave them the right to engage in surveillance for 72 hours without a warrant. So the question remains: what is the real reason George Bush and his team chose to bypass the FISC?
All this changed after George W. Bush became president. The court rejected six requests outright and modified 179. Some Bush supporters have tried to characterize the FISC justices as liberal obstructionists. In fact, all eleven members of the Bush-era FISC were selected by conservative Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist.
Whatever the answers to these questions, possible grounds for impeachment will probably center instead on whether Bush and Cheney are lying about what they have done and whether they usurped powers that the Constitution grants to the legislative and judicial branches of the United States government. President Bush claims that after 9/11 Congress gave him the power to do whatever he wants in fighting terrorism, including detaining suspects indefinitely without charge and without access to legal counsel and including engaging in surveillance of Americans without warrants. This must surely come as a surprise to most members of Congress, who were unaware that they had done this. Bush claims that as commander-in-chief of the armed forces, he is free to use whatever tactics he wants. This is a creative interpretation of Article II of the Constitution if ever there was one. As far as the FISC rules go, if President Bush has decided that he is not obligated to apply for warrants through the court, one wonders why he bothered to do so 5,645 times during the first term of his presidency.
In the coming months it will be fascinating to watch as each Republican member of Congress (and Joe Lieberman) decides whether he or she owes a greater loyalty to President Bush or to the Constitution. It is possible that the members of the Supreme Court, some of whom pride themselves on being strict constructionists, will face the same dilemma.
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