A Conservative Calls For Impeaching President Bush

The Progressive Magazine reports on Bruce Fein:

“There is not a single Supreme Court case that insinuates that the President can violate a federal statute in order to gather foreign intelligence,” Fein tells me. “It was a flagrant violation of the Constitution, which I feel that citizens as well as the government have a duty to defend.”

Fein cites the 1952 Supreme Court case of Youngstown Sheet & Tube v. Sawyer as support for the proposition that the President does not have “inherent authority” to bypass legislative enactments of Congress in a time of war.

In the Youngstown case, President Harry Truman cited his “inherent authority” and attempted to seize a steel mill during the war in Korea. The court mashed him back.

FISA, according to Fein, also reins in the President because it has never been overturned or held unconstitutional. It is the law, according to Fein, and if it can be disobeyed, why is the FISA court still in operation today?

“The warrantless surveillance program,” Fein stated before the Senate Judiciary Committee back on March 31, “justifies censure.” He testified that the President is “seeking to cripple the Constitution’s checks and balances” by bypassing the FISA court. And Fein said that Bush’s rationales “would reduce Congress to an ink-blot in the permanent conflict with international terrorism. The President could pick and choose which statutes to obey in gathering foreign intelligence and employing battlefield tactics on the sidewalks of the United States.” Fein denounced “President Bush’s contempt for the rule of law and constitutional limitations.”

Some people take the constitution seriously.