Can we impeach yet?

It's been about a year and a half since I wrote about the Bush Administration's warrantless wiretapping program. I took the trouble of actually reading the FISA statute, from which I learned that there appeared to be no legitimate reason for the President to act outside that law. Furthermore, by performing searches without warrants, President Bush was violating the 4th Amendment of the Constitution he has sworn to uphold.

Yesterday, former Deputy Attorney General James Comey gave testimony before Congress about the events of March 10, 2004. It was like something out of a soap opera. Attorney General John Ashcroft was in the hospital suffering from pancreatitis, which I hear is painful enough to make you wish you were dead, and he had temporarily transferred his authority to Mr. Comey. It so happens that Bush's wiretapping program needed to be reauthorized by the very next day, but Comey et al were of the opinion that the program was illegal and would not sign off on it. Since Comey was acting A.G., that should have been the end of it -- the program would not have been reauthorized. But the Leader of the Free World can't let a little thing like the law get in his way!

Comey testified that he learned Bush's Chief of Staff Andy Card and White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales were on their way to the hospital to visit Ashcroft (how sweet). I know I'm not the first to make the observation that what happened next bears a vague similarity to a scene in the movie The Godfather. Basically, Bush and company were trying to get an incapacitated Ashcroft to sign off on the wiretapping program -- over the objection of the acting A.G. Comey raced to the hospital with emergency lights flashing and beat Card and Gonzales to Ashcroft's bedside, and with that heroic act, the rule of law was saved. (There is more good stuff in the transcript, but I'll wrap it up for brevity's sake.)

In summary... President Bush had this program that was of dubious legality and violated basic civil rights. Then he and others in his administration went around the law to reauthorize this program. What does he have to do before it is considered high crimes and misdemeanors? Now can we talk about impeachment?

[17 MAY 2007 08:40:00] UPDATE: I looked for this story in Wednesday's Chicago Tribune. Apparently when we find that the U.S. Attorney General has perjured himself before Congress, when we find he has abetted the President in committing misdeeds -- this isn't front page material. Instead, we got an article about a hairdresser ("Is offbeat stylist cut out to be a 'Shear Genius'?") and an obituary for Jerry Falwell. The Gonzales hearing was tucked away on page 4 ("Ashcroft ex-aide details wiretap infighting").

[17 MAY 2007 18:05:00] UPDATE: Glenn Greenwald wrote an article about this on his blog at Salon.com and really nailed it. It's a must read. Also, when I was discussing this at lunch, one of my coworkers tipped me off to a Frontline episode titled "Spying on the Home Front" that aired on Tuesday. It deals with the NSA wiretapping program and related 4th Amendment issues. I missed the broadcast, but it is available for viewing online at Frontline's website.