US Democratic senators took the Bush administration to task on Friday for four years of domestic spying, while the president fought back with announcement of a planned embrace of the intelligence agency that is doing the spying.
In preparation for Senate hearings, Democratic Senator Edward Kennedy noted that Bush had asserted in 2004 that "when we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so."
That Bush statement came at the same time the National Security Agency (NSA) was engaging, at the president's direction, in warrantless eavesdropping on Americans.
"If President Bush can make his own rules for domestic surveillance, Big Brother has run amok,'' Kennedy said.
Introducing a proposed Senate resolution, Kennedy and Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy rejected White House assertions that congressional action after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks authorized eavesdropping inside the US without court warrants.
A joint resolution of Congress authorized the use of force against those responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks, but it "says nothing about domestic electronic surveillance," Kennedy said.
Pushing back, Bush is slated to visit the NSA on Wednesday, to reassert his claim that he has constitutional authority to let intelligence officials listen in to international phone calls of Americans with suspected ties to terrorists.
"We are stepping up our efforts to educate the American people," White House press secretary Scott McClellan said about the trip to the NSA, based at Fort Meade in Maryland.
McClellan called the program "a critical tool that helps us save lives and prevent attacks. It is limited to and targeted at al-Qaeda communications, with the focus being on detection and prevention.''
Deputy National Intelligence Director Mike Hayden, who led the NSA when the program began in October 2001, will speak tomorrow about the issue at the National Press Club in Washington.
On Tuesday, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is delivering a speech on the program in Washington.
Gonzales also plans to testify about the secret program on Feb. 6 before the Senate Judiciary Committee, where Kennedy and Leahy are members.
House Democrats contend that Bush committed a crime in authorizing the spying, and Republicans in the House of Representatives have abdicated their responsibilities by refusing to hold hearings.
Representative John Conyers, the House Judiciary Committee's top Democrat, and other Democrats met in a basement room of a House office building on Friday to hear a panel of lawyers and activists discuss whether Bush had committed an impeachable offense.
The Justice Department issued on Wednesday a 42-page legal justification for the eavesdropping program, an expanded version of a document the agency sent Congress late last month.
"Making their argument longer didn't make it any better," said Democratic Representative Chris Van Hollen, a judiciary committee member.
A US YouTuber who caused outrage for filming himself kissing a statue commemorating Korean wartime sex slaves has been sentenced to six months in prison, a court in Seoul said yesterday. Johnny Somali, 25, gained notoriety several years ago for recording himself doing a series of provocative stunts in South Korea and Japan, and streaming them on platforms such as YouTube and Twitch. South Korean authorities indicted Somali — whose real name is Ramsey Khalid Ismael — in 2024 on public order violations and obstruction of business, and banned him from leaving the country. “The court has sentenced him to six months in
Former Lima mayor Rafael Lopez Aliaga, a Peruvian presidential hopeful, gathered hundreds of supporters in Lima on Tuesday and gave authorities 24 hours to annul the first round of the country’s election over allegations of fraud. Lopez Aliaga is locked in a tight three-way race with two other candidates for second place in Sunday’s vote. The election runner-up wins a ticket to June’s presidential run-off against front-runner Keiko Fujimori. “I am giving them 24 hours to declare this electoral fraud null and void,” said Lopez Aliaga, surrounded by a crowd of several hundred supporters. “If it is not declared null and void tomorrow,
PAPAL RETORT: Pope Leo told reporters that he has ‘no fear, neither of the Trump administration nor speaking out loudly about the message of the Gospel’ US President Donald Trump has feuded with Pope Leo XIV over the Iran conflict — setting off an unholy row that could have serious political implications for the Republican leader back in the US. Trump has drawn barbs even from some allies over the attacks on the US-born pontiff, who has criticized the Trump administration over its immigration crackdown, the intervention in Venezuela and the Iran war. The president risks alienating the religious right in November’s crucial US midterm elections. So far the unprecedented clash between the leader of the most powerful military on Earth and the head of the world’s 1.4 billion
A 16-year-old boy has been charged with murder and aggravated sexual abuse in Florida in the death of his 18-year-old stepsister on a Carnival Cruise ship, the US Department of Justice said on Monday. Timothy Hudson was initially charged in February and subsequently indicted on March 10, but the breadth of the case was not known until a seal was lifted on Friday last week, weeks after US District Judge Beth Bloom in Miami said that he would be prosecuted as an adult at the request of the government. Anna Kepner had been traveling on the Carnival Horizon ship in November last
RSS