Mr. President, meet your censurer

Tom Curry National affairs writer • Profile • E-mail

WASHINGTON - As Sen. Russ Feingold urges the Senate to censure President Bush, the alleged misdeed that moved the Wisconsin Democrat to propose censure continues: The Bush administration keeps conducting surveillance of calls by suspected al-Qaida operatives to and from people in the U.S.

Feingold had to leave early from Tuesday's Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on how to legalize the National Security Agency surveillance program — he had an appointment at the White House to meet with the man he wants to censure.

Just back from Iraq, Feingold was part of a group of senators who went to discuss their findings with President Bush.

Would this meeting be awkward?

“No,” Feingold said as he hustled down a Senate hallway on his way to the White House. “The president and I and others who’ve been involved in government for a while know that each issue is different. And we have an obligation to each other and the country to treat each issue differently.”

He added, “I appreciate the president’s interest in the findings from the trip this weekend. In my mind, it won’t be awkward. I respect the president, I respect him personally and I respect his office.”

Meanwhile back at the Judiciary Committee, Chairman Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., has scheduled a Friday hearing on the censure proposal.

Specter opposes censure, as does Judiciary Committee Democrat Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware, who said at Tuesday’s hearing, with exasperation in his voice, “The idea of censuring the president — we don’t know what he did.”

The politics of a censure vote
Friday’s censure hearing sets up what both Feingold and Senate Majority leader Bill Frist want: a roll call vote on the Senate floor on censuring Bush.

This would force all 100 senators — and especially the potential Democratic presidential hopefuls — Sens. Biden, Evan Bayh, John Kerry and Hillary Clinton — to go in the spotlight and make their choice: either condemn Bush for taking an action which the president argues is necessary to defend the nation from al Qaida attacks — or give Feingold a potential weapon to use against them in the event that he too seeks the Democratic presidential nomination.

A “no” vote on censure would also incur the wrath of Democratic groups such as Moveon.org.

Even as he moves ahead on a censure showdown, Specter is also pressing forward on the bill he has drafted to put the NSA surveillance under the scrutiny of a special court established by the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).

Under Specter’s proposal, if, after finding out more about the program, the FISA court determined it was constitutional, then it could continue. 

“I’m going to bring it up as the priority item when we come back after the Easter break,” Specter said.

He said he’d conferred with Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and White House Counsel Harriet Miers on his bill. They see no need for it.

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