President Broke The Law Say Some Legal Experts

Via the Charlotte Observer At a White House news conference, Bush expressed outrage that the program had become public and vowed to continue it. The president said his constitutional power as commander in chief and the congressional resolution that authorized the use of military force against terrorists gave him the authority to order the eavesdropping. His explanation fueled more anger over the domestic spying, and some legal experts asserted that Bush broke the law on a scale that could warrant his impeachment. "The president's dead wrong. It's not a close question. Federal law is clear," said Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University and a specialist in surveillance law. "When the president admits that he violated federal law, that raises serious constitutional questions of high crimes and misdemeanors I don't know how much more it will take to convince the usual right-wing suspects who seem to support King George no matter what. They are simply wrong. It is getting so bad over there in freeper land, that now they have gone to their old standy of "well Clinton did it too". Their contention is During the 1990’s under President Clinton, the National Security Agency monitored millions of private phone calls placed by U.S. citizens and citizens of other countries under a super secret program code-named Echelon…all of it done without a court order, let alone a catalyst like the 9/11 attacks. Well surprise, surprise, they were wrong. A hat tip to Think Progress for bringing this to everyone's attention. Well everyone except the MSM. That’s flatly false. The Clinton administration program, code-named Echelon, complied with FISA. Before any conversations of U.S. persons were targeted, a FISA warrant was obtained. CIA director George Tenet testified to this before Congress on 4/12/00: I’m here today to discuss specific issues about and allegations regarding Signals Intelligence activities and the so-called Echelon Program of the National Security Agency… There is a rigorous regime of checks and balances which we, the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency and the FBI scrupulously adhere to whenever conversations of U.S. persons are involved, whether directly or indirectly. We do not collect against U.S. persons unless they are agents of a foreign power as that term is defined in the law. We do not target their conversations for collection in the United States unless a FISA warrant has been obtained from the FISA court by the Justice Department. You know I for one find the "Clinton did it too" defense a little more than tiresome. In fact it doesn't even make sense. If Clinton robbed a friggin bank, would that mean it would therefore be legal for George to do it too? Those dimwits need to get their heads out of George's ass and take a look at the real world.