Censure

ABC News:

In an exclusive interview on "This Week with George Stephanopoulos," Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold called on the Senate to publicly admonish President Bush for approving domestic wiretaps on American citizens without first seeking a legally required court order.

"This conduct is right in the strike zone of the concept of high crimes and misdemeanors," said Feingold, D-Wis., a three-term senator and potential presidential contender.

He said President Bush had, "openly and almost thumbing his nose at the American people," continued the NSA domestic wiretap program.

It sounds like Feingold is upset that the President lied to the American people when he stated that all wiretaps still need to go through the courts. And the American people should be upset as well, but I don't think they are mad enough to vote against Republicans who stand in the way of this.

Bill Frist has already stated this will never come to a vote, either. But it will show up if the Democrats can take control later this year.

It's a good move by Russ. First, it keeps the story in the news for a few days, and may even generate a poll. Second, it will help Feingold's standing with the netroots as he looks toward 2008.

*UPDATE* From a Feingold press release:

The President’s illegal wiretapping program is in direct violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). The FISA law makes it a crime to wiretap Americans in the United States without a warrant or a court order. The Bush Administration has obtained thousands of FISA warrants since September 11th and has almost never been rejected by the FISA court. FISA even allows wiretaps to be executed immediately in an emergency as long as the government obtains a warrant within 72 hours.

“This issue is not about whether the government should be wiretapping terrorists – of course it should, and it can under current law” Feingold said. “But this President and this Administration decided to break the law and they have yet to give a convincing explanation of why their actions were necessary, appropriate, or legal. Passing more laws will not change the fact that the President broke the ones already in place and for that, Congress must hold him accountable.”