WASHINGTON – A liberal Democrat and potential White House contender is proposing censuring President Bush for authorizing domestic eavesdropping, saying the White House misled Americans about its legality.
“The president has broken the law and, in some way, he must be held accountable,” said Sen. Russell Feingold, D-Wis.
A censure resolution would carry no punishment, and would mostly serve as a means for lawmakers to show their displeasure toward a president.
| A censure resolution simply would scold President Bush; impeachment is the only punishment outlined in the Constitution for a president.
* A censure resolution has been used just once in U.S. history against a president, against Andrew Jackson in 1834. Jackson was censured by the Senate after he removed the nation’s money from a private bank in defiance of the Whig Party, which controlled the Senate. * On Feb. 12, 1999, the Senate failed to gain enough votes to bring a censure resolution against President Clinton in relation to the Monica Lewinsky affair. |
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., called the proposal “a crazy political move” that would weaken the U.S. during wartime.
The five-page resolution to be introduced today contends that Bush violated the law when, on his own, he set up the eavesdropping program within the National Security Agency in the months following the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
The program granted intelligence officers the power to monitor, without court approval, the international calls and e-mails of U.S. residents, when those officers suspect terrorism may be involved.
Bush claims that his authority as commander in chief as well as a September 2001 congressional authorization to use force in the fight against terrorism gave him the power to authorize the surveillance.
The White House had no immediate response on Sunday.
The resolution says the president “repeatedly misled the public” before the disclosure of the NSA program last December when he indicated the administration was relying on court orders to wiretap terror suspects inside the U.S.
“Congress has to reassert our system of government, and the cleanest and the most efficient way to do that is to censure the president,” Feingold said. “And, hopefully, he will acknowledge that he did something wrong.”
The Wisconsin Democrat is considered a presidential contender for 2008.
In the House, Rep. John Conyers of Michigan, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, is pushing legislation that would call on the Republican-controlled Congress to determine whether there are grounds for impeachment.
Frist, appearing on ABC’s “This Week,” said that he hoped al-Qaida and other enemies of the U.S. were not listening to the infighting.
“The signal that it sends, that there is in any way a lack of support for our commander in chief who is leading us with a bold vision in a way that is making our homeland safer, is wrong,” Frist said.
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