I disagree that he lied under oath. In reading it, he said it was not the policy of the President to violate the law. You may disagree with that, but that does not make it a lie. The policy of the administration is that it is legal.

I can't find what I consider to be a nonpartisan source on either side of the issue. But that's the nature of legal disagreements. Our legal system is adversarial, so you have those that look at it one way and those that look at it another way.

It is hypothetical when the question was asking if the President could act in contravention of existing law. Gonzalez does not believe that is the case, therefore making it hypothetical.

So we have a symantic argument here.

Of course, it all depends on what the meaning of "is" is.

And as an aside Wendybeth, if you want to discuss the administrations border policies, then I'm with you on laying waste to the Constitution. Protecting the integrity of the borders is one of the only explicit Constitutionally mandated functions of the federal government. Bush is failing at this and making it a joke (he's not alone - even my beloved Reagan granted amnesty to illegals, and previous administration have done nothing about this either, but Bush should damn well fix the problem.).

Scary.

Where does it stop? How much can be permitted with this "ends justify the means" mentality? The whole point of the protections afforded by our Constitution is that no matter how practical and righteous the motivations may seem, any intrusion on basic personal liberties is a danger to everyone. "Don't worry, we're only targeting the bad guys," is NOT an excuse. The rhetoric Bush is using to justify this scares me. It's really a VERY small step away from, "If it means that drug dealers will be stopped, then yes warrantless searches are justified." No thanks.

Oh, I agree GD - but the question to me is what the President is permitted to do under the Constitution during times of war.

I could once again go into what Lincoln did during the civil war - and I have no qualms about doing so because history is completely relevant to the issue - but I have done that previously. Lincoln did some majorly unconstitutional things, but is regarded as one of the best Presidents. (Don't take this to mean I regard Bush to be equivalent in standing to Lincoln. That is not my point.)

A brief note - anyone remember the 2004 debates when Kerry criticized Bush for not be faster to have over 100,000 hours of tapes of wiretaps analyzed? I wonder if all 100,000 hours were authorized by warrant or if Kerry really cared. I would suspect he was trying to sound hawkish on national security by being critical of not spying fast enough.

But when the war (War on Terror) is defined by the president, how do we know when the war is over? The battle against terrorists will be fought until the end of time. Should we give the president wartime powers for a war without end?

My big problem with the "wartime" justification is that I don't really see a correlation between the war in Iraq (which isn't about terrorism no matter how you slice it) and the need for the executive branch to invade Americans' privacy. I have a feeling that if the prez could justify the "war on drugs" or the "war on child porn" as a legit "war", he would take advantage that way as well. The next thing you know, they'd be subpoenaing search engines for IP addresses.

Why, I'm sure they'd never do that, Mousepod.


We all know damn good and well that were the shoe on the other political foot the Repub's would be screaming bloody murder, Scaeagles. I honestly don't know how you or anyone else who truly loves this country and what we used to stand for can justify this. The claim that 'well, other Admins have done it, they were just better at hiding it' doesn't wash at all. Btw, there are breaks in the ranks at the White House:Palace Revolt.

Seems there are still some people of integrity in the government. At least, there were.

Mr. Bush declared an end to major combat operations in Iraq on May 3, 2003. I assume the wartime justification for listening to me talk dirty on the phone to my boss's wife is the so-called war on terror.

Well, who wouldn't want to tune in to that?
:D