Senator Russ Feingold Wants to Censure Bush
By Steve Boggess (04/02/06)
As the mid-term elections draw nearer, its time for all Democrats to go on the offensive to attempt to rally support for their party.
Senator Russ Feingold thinks he has the answer to the Democratic Party’s ills by trying to draw support to condemn Bush for doing his job; protecting American citizens.
However, in trying to gain support for his censure of the president, other Democrats have distanced themselves from this hotbed issue. As a matter of fact, Senator Feingold and Vice President Dick Cheney had some heated words between them recently. Senate leaders sent the issue to the Judiciary Committee.
In a rare display of intestinal fortitude, the Republican Party dared the Democrats to vote for the proposal. Speaking in Feingold’s home state of Wisconsin before a Republican audience, Vice President Cheney said that some Democrats in Congress have decided the president is the enemy.
The senator from Wisconsin, who is considering a run for the presidency in 2008, said recently: “The president has violated the law and Congress must respond.” Not mentioned anywhere in this diatribe is the fact that former president Jimmy Carter authorized wiretapping during his presidency in 1977.
That year, two men, Truong Dinh Hung, and Ronald Louis Humphrey, challenged their espionage convictions to the United States Court of Appeals for the fourth circuit, which unanimously ruled that the warrant less searches did not violate the men’s rights.
In 1977 then President Carter authorized warrant less electronic surveillance used in the conviction of two men for spying on behalf of Vietnam. At the Coretta Scott King funeral, Carter evoked a comparison to the Bush policy when referring to the “secret government wiretapping” of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.
Senator Feingold said: “A formal censure by Congress is an appropriate and responsible first step to assure the public that when the president thinks he can violate the law without consequences, Congress has the will to hold him accountable.” The senator’s fellow Democrats went on to add that while they understood his frustration, they held back overt support for the resolution.
Feingold’s resolution accuses Bush of violating the Constitution and the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Senator Feingold needs a lesson in Constitutional law as there is nothing in that document that specifically covers electronic eavesdropping.
The purpose of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is to “regulate the collection of foreign intelligence information in furtherance of United States counterintelligence, whether or not any laws were or will be broken.”
There is also a secret FISA court which is comprised of seven federal district court judges who are appointed by the Chief Justice for staggered terms and are from different circuits. The proceedings are nonadversarial and are based solely on the DOJ’s (Department of Justice) presentations through its Office of Intelligence Policy and Review.
President Bush has repeatedly stated that he has had the civil liberties of all Americans in mind when he uses the FISA court.
Senator Feingold and other Democrats are showing us all whose side they are one when in this time of war; they are more concerned with the civil rights of terrorists than they are with the rights of law abiding citizens.
The Democrats can not be trusted with our national security, for to attempt to censure a sitting president is to show our enemies how weak they really are on national defense.
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