John Dean: Bush 's actions broad compared to Nixon's, both impeachable

[ProSense]

George W. Bush as the New Richard M. Nixon: Both Wiretapped Illegally, and Impeachably;
Both Claimed That a President May Violate Congress' Laws to Protect National Security
By JOHN W. DEAN
----
Friday, Dec. 30, 2005


snip...

Then, on Saturday, December 17, in his radio broadcast, Bush admitted that the New York Times was correct - and thus conceded he had committed an impeachable offense.

There can be no serious question that warrantless wiretapping, in violation of the law, is impeachable. After all, Nixon was charged in Article II of his bill of impeachment with illegal wiretapping for what he, too, claimed were national security reasons.

These parallel violations underscore the continuing, disturbing parallels between this Administration and the Nixon Administration - parallels I also discussed in a prior column.

Indeed, here, Bush may have outdone Nixon: Nixon's illegal surveillance was limited; Bush's, it is developing, may be extraordinarily broad in scope. First reports indicated that NSA was only monitoring foreign calls, originating either in the USA or abroad, and that no more than 500 calls were being covered at any given time. But later reports have suggested that NSA is "data mining" literally millions of calls - and has been given access by the telecommunications companies to "switching" stations through which foreign communications traffic flows.

In sum, this is big-time, Big Brother electronic surveillance.

http://writ.news.findlaw.com/dean/20051230.html

[PDJane]

1. It certainly is..........

and it is fascism in action.

[tularetom]

2. Not to defend * but

the technology available to Nixon wouldn't have allowed the scope of spying that * has probably engaged in, otherwise I have no doubt that tricky dick would have snooped on everyone of us.

[truthisfreedom]

3. data-mining for the purposes of dominating the world. who has this data?

who knows what business secrets have been stolen? who knows what insider information is generating future billions for the BFEE?

[FogerRox]

4. John Dean-- good piece- and he has the perspective of the Nixon days

John Dean spells out how if BUSH was real about it-- how BUsh coulf have done the right thing:

Is Bush's Unauthorized Surveillance Action Justified? Not Persuasively.

Had Bush issued his Executive Order on September 12, 2001, as a temporary measure - pending his seeking Congress approval - those circumstances might have supported his call.

Or, had a particularly serious threat of attack compelled Bush to authorize warrantless wiretapping in a particular investigation, before he had time to go to Congress, that too might have been justifiable.

But several years have passed since the broad 2002 Executive Order, and in all that time, Bush has refused to seek legal authority for his action

Here Dean makes the case that the author behind the assumation of power is a little wet behind the ears:

But the core of Bush's defense is to rely on the very argument made by Nixon: that the president is merely exercising his "commander-in-chief" power under Article II of the Constitution. This, too, is a dubious argument. Its author, John Yoo, is a bright, but inexperienced and highly partisan young professor at Boalt Law School, who has been in and out of government service.

To see the holes and fallacies in Yoo's work - embodied in a recently published book -- one need only consult the analysis of Georgetown University School of Law professor David Cole in the New York Review of Books. Cole has been plowing this field of the law for many years, and digs much deeper than Yoo.

[FogerRox]

5. Dean finishs by saying the wiretapping maybe ineffective

towards the end of the piece:

Bush's unauthorized surveillance, in particular, seems very likely to be ineffective. According to experts with whom I have spoken, Bush's approach is like hunting for the proverbial needle in the haystack. As sophisticated as NSA's data mining equipment may be, it cannot, for example, crack codes it does not recognize. So the terrorist communicating in code may escape detection, even if data mining does reach him.

[ddeclue]

6. EXCELLENT!

I knew Dean was gonna write something good about it soon...

:-)
Doug D.