"Impeachment: It's Not Just for Oral Sex Anymore" (Nichols / Nation)

[struggle4progress]

<edit: fix link> ''What the President Ordered in This Case Was a Crime"

... But, surely, the issues that are at stake demand such seriousness -- as the American people have clearly indicated. A new Zogby Poll shows that 52 percent of Americas believe that, if George Bush violated the law when he ordered security agencies to engage in warrantless wiretaps on the communications of U.S. citizens who were accused of no crimes, the president should be impeached. So widespread is this faith that almost one quarter of those who identified themselves as "very conservative" expressed support for impeachment as a response to the spying scandal ...

"Last month all 17 House Judiciary Democrats called on Chairman Sensenbrenner to convene hearings to investigate the President's use of the National Security Agency to conduct surveillance involving U.S. citizens on U.S. soil, in apparent contravention of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. As our request has since been ignored, it is our job, as Members of Congress, to review the program and consider whether our criminal laws have been violated and our citizen's constitutional rights trampled upon," explained Conyers, who has played a critical role in investigations of wrongdoing by Democratic and Republican presidents since the days when Lyndon Johnson occupied the White House. "We simply cannot tolerate a situation where the Administration is operating as prosecutor, judge and jury and excluding Congress and the courts from providing any meaningful check or balance to the process."

Members of Congress who attended the hearing -- Conyers and a half dozen other Democrats -- heard George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley refer to the wiretapping ordered by Bush as ''an intelligence operation in search of a legal rationale." Without a doubt, Turley added, ''What the president ordered in this case was a crime," said Turley, who bluntly told the gathering that Sensenbrenner and other House Republicans have set a dangerous precedent by refusing to permit oversight hearings ...

The Conyers hearing had an impact on the members who bothered to attend it. Representative Jerrold Nadler, D-New York, the senior Democrat on the Judiciary Committee's panel on the Constitution, responded to the testimony by announcing that the Judiciary Committee needs to explore whether President Bush should be the subject of an impeachment inquiry for high crimes and misdemeanors stemming from his authorization of illegal spying ...

http://www.thenation.com/blogs/thebeat?bid=1&pid=51824