RUSS FEINGOLD
(Russell Dana Feingold)
Bush, more so than any other president, claimed executive powers that had never been claimed by other presidents even in wartime. At the time the senator made this statement, the Supreme Court had ruled against the President on several of his claims and others were pending. The powers ranged from the right to hold even American Citizens incommunicado without filing any charges or going before a court or even allowing a court to review the action if the President Claims the person was an “enemy combatant” or “terrorist”; to the right to spy on American Citizens phone calls in America without any court review and even went so far as to claim the right to question Americans or other suspected enemies by methods that are classified as “torture” by most nations and is even illegal by the American Military Regulations for interrogating prisoners.
The Congress over the last century has ceded much of its Constitutional power to the President. Congress has much power to check the President, but just as Congress has not been very competent at legislating, oversight, and conducting hearings and investigations, it has not organized itself to use the powers it has very well.
President George W. Bush had ordered NSA agents to bug the phones and email of American citizens who might have been talking with an overseas party or e-mailing them out of the country. The administration thought that American citizens might be part of terrorist sleeper cells or unwittingly were aiding terrorists. The law prohibited such activity—where American citizens were involved—without getting a court order. However, the President claimed that he had the inherent power as commander in chief of exempting the court requirement. Others maintained that even the President is not above the law. What was the big puzzle was that there was a secret court Congress had established just for such cases, but the administration instead decided to bypass the court.
Russell Dana Feingold is an American lawyer and politician who served as a United States Senator from Wisconsin from 1993 to 2011. A member of the Democratic Party, he was its nominee in the 2016 election for the same U.S. Senate seat he had previously occupied. From 1983 to 1993, he was a Wisconsin State Senator representing the 27th District.
