3.20.2006

Feingold on Charlie Rose

On Charlie Rose the other night, Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) explained the rationale behind his motion to censure Bush for illegal domestic wiretapping:
I'm both on the judiciary committee and the intelligence committee. I've been on both committees looking at this, and after three months, I came to the conclusion that I think just about anyone focused on the law in this area would come to, which is: he doesn't have a leg to stand on for this being legal. You couple that with the fact that he had mislead the american people on at least three occasions saying that he always got warrants. And after the program was discovered, the president got out and said, basically, 'Tough luck. I'm going to do whatever I want to do here, whether it's in the law or not.' That to me demands a response. And I decided we had to at least look at the possibility of letting the president know on the record that what he's done here is illegal and wrong. That's why I proposed censure. I did not propose impeachment because, to me, obviously that's a more extreme step, and you have to consider whether this is really a good time to talk about removing the president from office, even though this is conduct I think the founding fathers would've found right within the strike zone of high crimes and misdemeanors.
Watch the video here.

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