While it appears that much of the left is celebrating Specter’s announcement that he has already come to the conclusion that what Bush did violated FISA:
The Republican who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee said today that he believed the Bush administration had violated the law with its warrantless surveillance program and that its legal justifications for the program were ?strained and unrealistic.?
The program ?is in flat violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act,? said the chairman, Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, who will open committee hearings on Monday.
His other statements appear to be saying that the FISA statute may be unconstitutional.? The powers granted to the President by the Constitution ALWAY supercedes any statute:
Sen. Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter said Sunday that while President Bush’s terrorist surveillance program is a “flat out violation” of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, it may be entirely legal because of powers granted the president by the Constitution.
“There is an involved question here . . . as to whether the president’s powers under Article 2, his inherent powers, supersede a statute.” Specter told NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
The Pennsylvania Republican said that if the FISA statute “is inconsistent with the Constitution, the Constitution governs and the constitutional powers predominate.”
Specter, whose committee is set to commence hearings Monday into the surveillance program, said that when the FISA law was signed by President Carter, he voluntarily surrendered his power to conduct independent domestic surveillance without a warrant.
“But that?s not the end of the discussion,” the top Republican cautioned, promising that his hearings would explore the issue of presidential prerogatives and the FISA Act’s constitutionality – or lack thereof.
Specter said he may call Carter as a witness to explain his thinking on the FISA law.
“I?ve been discussing that, and it?s on the agenda for consideration,” he explained.
Kinda funny that he is even questioning this fact.? Of course the Constitution supercedes statutes.? Amazing that Specter is now just discovering the Constitution.? Plus he is saying that Carter voluntarily?surrendered powers granted to him by the Constitution, which HE CANNOT DO.
Neither Congress nor the President may limit the powers granted to him by the Constitution, plain and simple.? The only way this is possible is with a Constitutional Amendment.
Either way, if Carter is called to testify, the biggest embarrassment our country has ever endured, then this hearing will be nothing but a waste of oxygen.
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The President, whoever he or she is, cannot “surrender” constitutional rights. He can choose not exersize those rights, but he cannot surrender them.
In fact, Congress cannot take those rights away or amend them. In fact, the Supreme Court cannot touch them either.
The only way rights explicitely given under the constitution is through an amendment, which is nearly impossible in todays era. Amending the constitution involves both houses of congress and all the various state legislatures to concur in various majoraties.
I’m not thrilled with the notion of hearing anything Carter has to say.
Something tells me the left will continue to carry on like a bunch of cranked up banshees about the first part. They will have tuned out by the time the second part was stated.