There Will Be No Investigation

The Republican-controlled House and Senate Intelligence Committees have rejected an investigation into the Bush administration's illegal, warrantless wiretapping [link], and hardly a word has been spoken about it. This administration has admitted to the illegal wiretapping, and we have only their word that the wiretaps are confined to cases where there is legitimate suspicion of terrorist activity. Their word is worth absolutely nothing, since until the wiretapping was revealed, they never publicly admitted it even existed.

This is clearly an impeachable offense. The Bush administration claims that they had the legal justification to do this based on general laws, despite the fact that there are specific laws prohibiting it. In cases where laws are in conflict with each other, legal precedent states that specific laws supersede general ones. There is specific law, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which specifically makes these warrentless wiretaps illegal. This specificity gives it greater weight over the general powers given to the president to fight the war on terror.

My only hope is that the Democrats can use this as a campaign issue to try to take back the Congress this year, and therefore, order a formal investigation, if it is still possible at that time.

Because my hopes rest with the Democratic party, I can not be optimistic. There is much talk about how historically, the only time that a second term president had an approval rating as low as Bush does now was during the Nixon administration, and his party suffered a devastating defeat in the mid-term elections. I am confident that if there is a way for someone to upset historical precedent, and squander a nationwide desire for a change of leadership, the Democrats would find a way.