Russ Feingold wants to censure the president for things he never did
03.14.06 (12:21 am) [edit]A censure is basically a formal scolding of the president from the Senate. If Russ Feingold succeeds in his censure motion this will most likely give the House Democrats to try an impeachment motion, although they may wait until after the elections.
But what, exactly, does Feingold want to censure the president for? Well, for his "domestic spying" program, of course, something that Feingold says tears up the Bill of Rights.
Now, if Bush was spying on Americans that would be true. It would be an impeachable offense. But once again Feingold and the willing mainstream media MISCHARACTERIZE WHAT BUSH ACTUALLY DID.
What Bush actually did was monitor phone calls from Al Qaeda to people in the US and to Al Qaeda from people in the US. These were known Al Qaeda phone contacts discovered while prosecuting the war on terror. Bush did not authorize spying on the man down the street when he calls a phone sex line, or the hippie up the street when he calls to make another contribution to MoveOn. NO, all Bush did was something sensible and logical: he authorized the NSA to monitor these calls because they did, in fact, represent national security threats.
In fact, President Bush has the explicit right to do what he did. The ONLY thing president Bush did that he could be censured for in this case is that he did not seek a warrant. The administration has argued that seeking a warrant would have taken much more time than what they had. Given the fact that this occured in the hysteria right after 9/11 I am inclined to believe that the administration thought they had no time to lose. Still, such an act is censurable and would be the only appropriate use of such a motion.
But we Americans have had five straight years of mischaracterizations of this president. From election 2000 t0 9/11 to WMD to Bush's Guard service, to PortGate and the wiretapping 'scandal', to Valerie Plame and yellowcake, every scandal has been manufactured by liberals and the media who have from the beginning contested Bush as a president.
This is a fact whether you are a Republican, Democrat, Independent, whatever. And it is dangerous, for while serious stuff is going on in this world, we have no way of knowing the truth because the media is untruthful about so many things. We make it harder for those entrusted to defend this country to do so, as they start doing things not for the right reasons but for political ones (so they don't get browbeaten by the MSM).
So Feingold can try and censure the president, but he and the media have it entirely wrong. Feingold aims to censure the president on lies. What a surprise.