WASHINGTON - A liberal Democratic senator who is considering a White House bid in 2008 said Sunday he is seeking to censure President Bush over his domestic eavesdropping program. The Senate majority leader called it "a crazy political move."
A censure resolution, which simply would scold the president, has been used just once in U.S. history — against Andrew Jackson in 1834.
Wisconsin Sen. Russ Feingold, a longtime critic of the Bush administration, said he hoped a censure would cause Bush to apologize for the warrantless surveillance that he put in place on his own after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
"What the president did, by consciously and intentionally violating the Constitution and the laws of this country with this illegal wiretapping, has to be answered," Feingold said on ABC's "This Week."
Right. The courts have already rules that this sort of intelligence gathering is a power inherent to the executive branch. The Senate is getting ready to pass some legislation rubber-stamping what the President has already been doing with this particular NSA program. Yet Feingold calls the President's actions unconstitutional and illegal?
Give me a break. That partisan liberals like Feingold are reduced to agitating for a toothless Congressional "scolding" of the President over the NSA stuff proves just how wrong they were about the whole thing from the get-go.
The President stood behind his decision with the NSA program and Congress has had to back down and accept what he has been doing as Constitutional and legal. This is a major victory for President Bush, but don't expect it to be played that way in the media where we'll probably hear more about complaints like the one above from people like Feingold than the fact that Congress is going along with what the President was already doing.