Update on President Bush's NSA Program (John Dean)

[struggle4progress]

An Update on President Bush's NSA Program:
The Historical Context, Specter's Recent Bill, and Feingold's Censure Motion

By JOHN W. DEAN

Friday, Mar. 24, 2006

President George Bush continues to openly and defiantly ignore the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) -- the 1978 statute prohibiting electronic inspection of Americans' telephone and email communications with people outside the United States without a court-authorized warrant. (According to U.S. News & World Report, the President may also have authorized warrantless break-ins and other physical surveillance, such as opening regular mail, in violation of the Fourth Amendment.) <snip>

In some two hundred and seventeen years of the American presidency, there has been only one President who provides a precedent for Bush's stunning, in-your-face, conduct: Richard Nixon. Like Bush, Nixon claimed he was acting to protect the nation's security. Like Bush, Nixon broke the law - authorizing, among other things, illegal wiretaps. <snip.

Nixon also claimed he was only doing what his predecessors had done. That was not untrue - but what had, in the past, been the exception to the rule became standard operating procedure under Nixon.

Bush, however, can only claim one predecessor for his actions: Nixon. And, of course, he has not made this claim - for Nixon was forced from office because of his defiance of the law. <snip>

http://writ.news.findlaw.com/dean/20060324.html

[babylonsister]

1. Coming from Dean, this is especially worth paying attention to.

I hope their collective defiance bites them in their asses. This is NOT a monarchy!:grr: :grr:

[struggle4progress]

2. Dean was perhaps the only Nixonite who repented: he's still ..

.. a conservative but he, at least, in comparison with the others, found a moral center ...