Former Nixon aide say Bush's illegal behavior goes beyond anything that Nixon did. Former lawyer for President Nixon, John Dean, calls for Congress to censure Bush for his violations of the law:

Bush, Dean told the Senate Judiciary Committee, should be censured and possibly impeached.

"Had the Senate or House, or both, censured or somehow warned Richard Nixon, the tragedy of Watergate might have been prevented," Dean told the Senate Judiciary Committee. "Hopefully the Senate will not sit by while even more serious abuses unfold before it."

http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/03/....ap/index.html

And, the plot thickens...

__________________
Most people do not really want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility, and most people are frightened of responsibility.
Sigmund Freud

Seems to me that our Moronic (dare I say retarded leader) love things ILLEGAL. Wire Taping, ILLEGAL Immigrants.

If I may get a gentle dig in (I don't mean to be mean-spirited), you don't understand the nuance of the situation.

Congress can make all the laws they want. The President still has Constitutional powers that can't be abbrogated by any law.

The President is the commander-in-chief. As such, he has wartime powers.

If the executive branch is listening in to known enemies contacting domestic entities, that isn't necessarily a bad thing. It may break that particular law. But law itself may be unconstitutional.

I've been told that there is legal precendent for this, but I haven't verified the issue for myself.

There is, at least, historical precedent for this. FDR had American mail opened up.

However, there was a specific law passed for those purposes -- FISA. It made it legal for the president to do these kinds of things, provided he would follow a few rules. We need rules and laws to govern all citizens' behavior. As the famous saying goes -- "Not even the President of the United States is above the law."

This is one of those pesky little things which makes America such a great country in which to live.

__________________
Most people do not really want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility, and most people are frightened of responsibility.
Sigmund Freud

And the Constitution is the ultimate law of the land. If the powers granted in that trump the FISA law, the FISA law is trumped.

The Constitution ensures seperation of powers and checks in balances; the Congress passed a law to "check" the president's powers as it relates to wiretapping. (We do have something called the Bill of Rights.) No US court has ruled the FISA law un-Constitutional; it's been around for three decades. If it were un-Constitutional, it would have been struck down by now. Not even the Bush White House is prepared to make that argument.

There's something about due process, which is at the core of why we have the so-called Secret FISA Court. That Court, in a sense, allows for a due process to take place by reviewing and approving the wiretaps. They act in the stead of the individual US citizen. No court has approved the notion that the US President (or any official person and/or entity) has the right to, en masse, deny due process to US citizens.

However, that was a good job reeeeeeeeeeaching!

__________________
Most people do not really want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility, and most people are frightened of responsibility.
Sigmund Freud

If the law constrains his powers as command and chief, Congress could try to check whatever it wants. Wouldn't matter.

A court doesn't have to declare it as unconstitutional for it to be unconstitutional. If it encroaches on the commander's ability to collect information on foreign enemies (or domestic agents of foreign powers), you do not have a clear cut case.

I also found this on the net:

Interesting. Just to make sure i understand, are you saying that if Bush knows that the Supremes will eventually find in his favor, he's justified in ignoring FISA? That's like Nixon saying the SC will ultimately agree with him, so he should go ahead and erase the Watergate tapes, isn't it? What if he's wrong?

I'm asking this seriously: how can anything be unconstitutional before the SC declares it so? Aren't they the final authority?

Presidents have wartime powers when the country is at war. Bush grabbed quickly at the war metaphor after 9/11 because he wanted those powers.

Nevertheless, the resolution he got from Congress only authorized him to suppress terrorism, not to wage war. The "War on Terrorism" is a phrase dreamed up in the White House press office, not a military fact. Yes, we've got troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, but both affairs are separate from the terror "problem" which, in actuality, barely exists across the globe and not at all in the United States.

BTW, this "commander in chief" label gets way over-applied. The president is commander in chief of the armed forces. But I am not a member of the armed forces, therefore the president is not MY commander in chief. He is merely a government employee and I, a citizen, am one of his supervisors. Obviously, he'd rather that we citizens see him as the C-I-C. Lots more status in that.

I trust everyone has seen this: http://www.usatoday.com/news/washing...5-10-nsa_x.htm

Frightening frightening stuff. I've had conspiracy theorizing friends over the years that could dream this stuff up!