"Excuse me, Mr. Gonzales, but I do believe your pants are on fire."

"Excuse me, Mr. Gonzales, but I do believe your pants are on fire."
By Melissa McEwan
Posted on January 31, 2006
http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/mcewan/31632/

Remember when it would have mattered that our Attorney General is a big, stinking liar? Yeah, those were the days.

In a letter to the attorney general yesterday, [Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.)] demanded to know why Gonzales dismissed the senator's question about warrantless eavesdropping as a "hypothetical situation" during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in January 2005. At the hearing, Feingold asked Gonzales where the president's authority ends and whether Gonzales believed the president could, for example, act in contravention of existing criminal laws and spy on U.S. citizens without a warrant.

Gonzales said that it was impossible to answer such a hypothetical question but that it was "not the policy or the agenda of this president" to authorize actions that conflict with existing law. He added that he would hope to alert Congress if the president ever chose to authorize warrantless surveillance, according to a transcript of the hearing.

In fact, the president did secretly authorize the National Security Agency to begin warrantless monitoring of calls and e-mails between the United States and other nations soon after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The program, publicly revealed in media reports last month, was unknown to Feingold and his staff at the time Feingold questioned Gonzales, according to a staff member. Feingold's aides developed the 2005 questions based on privacy advocates' concerns about broad interpretations of executive power.

Gonzales was White House counsel at the time the program began and has since acknowledged his role in affirming the president's authority to launch the surveillance effort.

Hmm. Lying under oath, eh? Didn’t we impeach a president for that once upon a time…?

Notes AMERICAblog's Joe in DC:

Lying is standard operating procedure for the Bush Administation. They lie to the media all the time, but those patsies just keep regurgitating whatever the White House throws them. But, lying to Congress should have consequences. There was a time when that mattered. The Bush White House has emasculated Congress in the same way they did it to the press. Pathetic.

Agreed. Pathetic and fairly scary.

(AMERICAblog.)

Melissa McEwan writes and edits the blog Shakespeare's Sister. She lives in Indiana with two cats and a Scotsman.