According to a CNN/USA Today/Gallup Poll, 21% of Americans believe that there phone calls have been listened to. Also in the poll, 49 percent of Americans said that "the president had definitely or probably broken the law" while "47 percent said he probably or definitely had not."
Wiretaps, as I have said before, of American citizens without a warrant, are totally outrageous and illegal. The president said that Congress alluded to giving him power to have warrant less wiretaps, but many members to Congress have said that they DID NOT give him any such power. The Congressmen and woman are the ones who know what they were meaning when they passed the bill, but now the President is saying that he has the power to say what the bill says. But in the bill NEVER says anything actually about wiretaps. NEVER!!! PERIOD.
Bush and the NSA can try as they might, but Congress never gave him permission to wiretap American citizens. And previously passed legislation MANDATES warrants for wiretaps on Americans. The President, the most powerful person in the world, must respect the law. If he doesn't, what does it show about the rest of America?!?!
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You have got this wrong. The President has inherent powers under the Constitution to prosecute a war how he sees fit, after the Congress has declared the war. The President has declared that the wire-taps he is authorizing fall under his war-making powers.
It may or may not have been a good idea, but the Congress did indeed declare a war on terrorism after the attack on New York and Washington. While we are at war, the President has a host of Constitutional powers that he does not have during peace time.
The only way Congress can rein in the wiretapping is by committing political suicide – that is, by stopping spending on the war. That they have the power to do.
Also, remember we have been told that Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton also conducted electronic surveillance without court warrants, and I suspect that Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, and the early George Bush may have also.
Clearly the FISA law that requires warrants for domestic surveillance is outdated and may as well be repealed.
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