"When the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was created in 1978, Attorney General Griffin Bell, testified before the intelligence committee, and he said that the current bill recognizes no inherent power of the President to conduct electronic surveillance. He said, ‘This bill specifically states that the procedures in the bill are the exclusive means by which electronic surveillance may be conducted.’ In other words, what the President is saying is that he has these inherent powers to conduct electronic surveillance, but the whole reason for creating this act, according to the Attorney General at the time, was to prevent the President from using any inherent powers and to use exclusively this act." J. Bamford

The FISA Act was created to be that stop-gap. It was created specifically to address any consequent President from using the very argument that Nixon tried and Bush and this Adminstration have used... all they had to do was get FISA approval (which, again, was a given).. all President Bush had to do was follow the law.

Also... the President admitted to wiretapping domestic-to- domestic calls and intercepts 2 weeks after 9/11. So from roughly Nov 2001- to this disclosure by Bush and the Bush Administration in 2005... you would think that this Administration would have been able to have found the time to have followed Federal Statute and Proceedure? Of all that I have read (not exhaustive by any means) those requests through FISA are hardly ever denied. No one would have denied Bush.

You asked for specific crimes.. President Bush broke federal law. And has already publically admitted it.

right? .. from Nov 2001 to Dec 2005 .. and there is no reason to think it's stopped.. American citizens without their knowledge, consent or protection of the FISA Act have been subjected to surveillence.

Now if the only people who were being wiretapped within the US were from Middle East countries.. or were already foreign people of 'interest' I'd take that slippery slope ride and be ok with that...


However...

"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." ~ Benjamin Franklin

This patent violation of our Fourth Amendment rights is the main problem, the really big problem, with the proposed FISA amendments, not the relatively unimportant issue of immunity for telecom companies (after all even if they could be sued, how the heck can anyone prove he was the subject of a secret wiretap?) Both Republicans and Democrats in Congress have played up the immunity issue in hopes of diverting the attention of the media and most Americans from the fact that they' could be wiretapped without any court approval or even any official record of it. And that subterfuge has worked. Most people are whining on one side of the other about telecom immunity, and there is almost no media or public concern about warrantless wiretaps.

N.B.- that in 2007 when Democrats took control of Congress they were holding hearings and making outraged statements about warrantless wiretaps, not the notion of immunity for telecom companies.

ok.. but my understanding of the importance of not granting immunity for telecoms is that.. should there be immunity, no federal trials or investigations would be justified. That denying immunity, it would then be incumbent upon the justice systems.. (sigh.. the DoJ) to follow up.. whereby opening up documents (which probably have gone missing, or destroyed, or.. will be endlessly block by appeals, or denied due to the inherent executive priviledge... etc...) to investigation.

Which is why suddenly the issue of immunity came up originally.. tied in with FISA re-authorization.

Wandering, the three-footed stool (administrative,legislative and judicial) has now had two of its feets kicked out.....The question remains unanswered: Why such "mistrust and distrust" of the courts by Bush ???

well, I have to formally object to moving this thread, the intent of the posts originally were within the context of impeachment.

Wandering, I understand. I like your original post and have no objection with it in regards to the Impeachment topic. You are welcome to repost it (by responding to the last post on the Constitutional Cope d' etat thread.

Please understand the FISA controversy discussion has taken off as a topic of it's own. My other choice was to remove all the posts following yours because they weren't within the context of the original topic...not of which I want to do, because the posts are good and the subject interesting. Your post is the catalyst to this new thread.

What are you talking about, CG?

Here's an interesting point regarding Big Brother...if you do not have a file with the FBI, CIA or other government agency, and you request something via the Freedom of Information Act, you then have a file with the FBI, CIA, or other government agency.

Frankly, I'm surprised Bush hasn't found the time to deep six that FOIA in the first place.

I haven't had a visit from the FBI but with all the time I spend on sites trying to understand "the enemy" together with some of the searches I run for discussions on this board... my time may be coming! (I'm saving my posts to prove my patriotism!)