{"id":6408,"date":"2006-01-23T10:12:32","date_gmt":"2006-01-23T15:12:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=6408"},"modified":"2006-01-23T10:12:32","modified_gmt":"2006-01-23T15:12:32","slug":"and-then-there-were-seven-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/and-then-there-were-seven-2\/","title":{"rendered":"And then there were seven"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday on Fox News Sunday, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) became the latest Senate Republican to raise legal questions<\/a> about the president’s warrantless-search program.<\/p>\n

Wallace: But you do not believe that currently he has the legal authority to engage in these warrant-less wiretaps.<\/p>\n

McCain: You know, I don’t think so, but why not come to Congress? We can sort this all out. I don’t think — I know of no member of Congress, frankly, who, if the administration came and said here’s why we need this capability, that they wouldn’t get it. And so let’s have the hearings.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

By my count, that brings the total of Senate Republicans who don’t believe the president had the lawful authority to engage in this surveillance to seven: Specter<\/a> (Pa.), Graham<\/a> (S.C.), Hagel<\/a> (Neb.), Snowe<\/a> (Maine), Lugar<\/a> (Ind.), Brownback<\/a> (Kan.), and now, McCain<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The point, of course, is that we’re talking about bi-partisan criticism. Karl Rove is desperate to convince the nation that Dems don’t want any surveillance against suspect terrorists — a demonstrable lie — but the fact is, the body of critics against the president’s program is growing and spans the ideological spectrum<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A number of Republicans have joined Democrats in challenging the surveillance program, pointedly reminding the administration that precedents established today will be in place whenever a Democrat returns to power.<\/p>\n

“A lot of Democrats?” said one prominent Republican supporter of Mr. Bush, who did not want to be identified while being critical of a White House that famously does not brook criticism. “Democrats, Karl? Republicans, too.”<\/p>\n

David A. Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union, said: “A lot of conservatives are very skeptical about it. It is not as clean-cut a political win as the administration thinks that it is.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Not even close.
\n
\nRemember, Patriots to Restore Checks and Balances (PRCB) has blasted the legality of the program — and there’s nothing liberal about them<\/a>. The group includes former Rep. and Clinton-impeachment manager Bob Barr (R-Ga.); Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform; David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union; Paul Weyrich, chairman of the Free Congress Foundation; and Alan Gottlieb, founder of the Second Amendment Foundation.<\/p>\n

Let’s also not forget, Bruce Fein, a conservative constitutional scholar and former deputy attorney general in the Reagan Administration, said that the president is flouting the Constitution<\/a> and may have committed an impeachable offense<\/a>. Norm Ornstein, a conservative scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, echoed Fein, saying<\/a>, “I think if we’re going to be intellectually honest here, this really is the kind of thing that Alexander Hamilton was referring to when impeachment was discussed.”<\/p>\n

The White House will be desperate to spin this scandal as a partisan affair. It’s not.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday on Fox News Sunday, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) became the latest Senate Republican to raise legal questions about the president’s warrantless-search program. Wallace: But you do not believe that currently he has the legal authority to engage in these warrant-less wiretaps. McCain: You know, I don’t think so, but why not come to Congress? […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6408","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6408","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6408"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6408\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}