Return of the Gorebot
Tuesday, January 17th, 2006Al Gore has crawled out from whatever rock he is hiding under these days, and he still hasn’t learned anything about the government and how it works:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Former Vice President Al Gore called on Monday for an independent counsel to investigate whether President George W. Bush broke the law in authorizing domestic eavesdropping without court approval.
U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales plans to testify in Senate hearings, expected next month, to give the administration’s legal justification for the secret domestic eavesdropping operation.
“A special counsel should be immediately appointed by the attorney general to remedy the obvious conflict of interest that prevents him from investigating what many believe are serious violations of law by the president,” Gore said in a speech to The American Constitution Society and The Liberty Coalition.
What Gore fails to comprehend is that warrentless wiretaps is an unadjudicated matter, in that the Supreme Court has not yet ruled on whether or not the types of wiretaps used by the Bush Administration are legal or not. The correct way to deal with these wiretaps is to bring a case into Federal Court and get a judicial determination on whether or not they are legal. Only then would an Independent Counsel be able to handle an inquiry.
He accused Bush of breaking the law for not getting court approval for the National Security Agency eavesdropping operation on communications such as phone calls and e-mail coming into and going out of the United States of people suspected of terrorism ties.
“We still have much to learn about the NSA’s domestic surveillance. What we do know about this pervasive wiretapping virtually compels the conclusion that the president of the United States has been breaking the law repeatedly and insistently,” Gore said.
“A president who breaks the law is a threat to the very structure of our government,” he said.
You can insert your favorite Clinton joke here.
Those of us in the real world know that Bill Clinton authorized many of these types of wiretaps during his eight years in the White House. How come they were legal then? How come Clinton’s use of the same power didn’t “compel[s] the conclusion that the president of the United States has been breaking the law repeatedly and insistently”? Oh yeah, I remember now: Clinton was a Democrat, so he gets a pass.
Paul at Power Line has some thoughts on the Gorebot’s return.
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