Why is the US Senate allowing Pres Bush to break the law but are not investigating it?
138159
The republicans hold the majority in the Senate. The democrats are trying to get an investigation going but they are blocked by the majority. There are only a couple of republicans brave enough to go against their President.
711108
The Democrats broke the Bush Dictatorship, took control of the House of Representatives and the Senate is still in question. Bush will have to be responsible for his actions now. Democracy still works with the Constitution.
218000
A sitting President is effectively immune from criminal prosecution or civil liability.  However if the evidence was particularly damning, then the president would likely be impeached and then afterwards brought up on criminal charges.\n\nOnly one president has quit and none has been actually removed from office by Congressional action.  \n\nThere are a lot of nasty things the President has to authorize (directly or indirectly) in order to protect the country.  Many of these, while heinous, are not actually illegal -- and, in fact, lying to the American public is actually a job requirement.  \n\nJust take a look at the people here on Yahoo Answers and you'll see why most Americans need to be lied to.  They not only can't handle the truth; they prefer comforting lies.
133221
It is apparently legal or he would not be doing it.  War time calls for certain things to be given up in the name of National Security.  The fact is that the generations before us have given up a whole lot more in times of war than this generation has even begun to think about.  They rationed everything in WWII and in all wars before this one and the first Gulf War people were drafted into service of their country without recourse. If they said you had to go you had to go, at least that is not happening at this point.  An all voluteer military has more morale and our Service Personell have the best training and equipment that any military has ever had.  \n\nThe fact is that the databases that have been questioned have always been available through business means and that was never questioned anymore than someone selling your name and address to telemarketers used to be.  Now in order to keep us safe they are lisening to International calls, well if it makes us safer for even just one more day then it was worth it.  Remember how we all felt after 9/11 and think about how if that happened again tomorrow the same people who are complaining about the wiretapping would be the first to ask why the government did not do more to protect us from this happening again.  \n\nIf it would be found to be an impeachable offense the president would have to be indited by the House of Representitives and tried in the Senate and convicted by a 2/3 majority of the Senate.  Without a major change in the elections this year it is not very likely that this would happen politically.  The sorriest about all of this is that it is taking away from the work that the Legislature should be doing, these proceedings always take away more than they will ever bring and no President seated or unseated has ever been convicted in an impeachment proceeding.
329721
He doesn't answer because it would be self-incriminating.... there isn't an investigation because the Congress is Republican...\nThe Republican Congress is the one that started the Clinton investigation...\nI would say that after the next election... investigations into a lot of different aspects will occur
919149
Yes HR 6166 EH has a clause which allows past and future war crimes. That doesn't make the bill legal, most of it is unconstitutional.  It has no effect on international law, something Bush doesn't seem to understand, and preparations are being made in other countries to charge him and others with war crimes.\n\nHe will be in his little territory (paid for with black appropriations) in Paraguay with his families Nazi buddies when they try to put him on trial.
1082235
I think you're a bit behind the times. Bush has signed into law a piece of legislation barring protests at military funerals.\n\nThe new law bars protests within 300 feet of the entrance of a national cemetery and within 150 feet of a road into the cemetery. This restriction applies an hour before until an hour after a funeral. Those violating the act would face up to a $100,000 fine and up to a year in prison.\n\nThis was directed at Fred Phelps and his band of nutjobs, no doubt.
613630
I don't think waiting it out is the best path to take...If Bush did something illegal, something to deserve impeachment he should be punished. Perhaps his problem is that he's been getting away with things for far too long. Our leaders need to be held accountable.
368917
Again, from the documentary 'Corporation' a federal court ruled in a wrongful termination law suit that lying on television when not under any sort of oath or affirmation is NOT against the law.\n\nFox News allegedly had ordered some reporters to report misleading information about medical procedures for increasing the output of dairy cows, specifically to state the procedure was safe when that was not yet proven. When the reporters refused, they were fired. They filed lawsuit under the whistle blower federal law which protects employees who refuse to follow orders which are against the law. The Federal Judge ruled in favor of Fox, stating that lying on television is NOT against the law, and thus there is no protection for an employee who refuses to obey legal but unethical orders.\n\nAny statements that President Bush may have made, whether they were misleading as his critics would have us believe or a reasonable difference of opinion as his defenders would have us believe, were not under any specific oath or affirmation and thus are not a violation of any law. The Constitution states that the President can only be impeached for 'high crimes or misdemeanors.'\n\nPresident Clinton was impeached because of statements that were made while under oath in an ongoing trial, not for his statement in the press conference. While it is obvious that the actions he took during the affair were specifically done so in his own mind he could pretend he was not having 'sexual relations,' the majority of Americans would have to admit the actions were certainly close enough!
318926
Actually, the US Supreme Court has NOT addressed warrantless wiretaps as they are being done by Bush. To the contrary, the Supreme Court has said (see Hamdi v. Rumsfeld) that the current poltiical situation is "not a blank check" for the President to do anything he wants, regardless of existing laws.\n\nIn fact, there are two reasons why warrantless wiretapping is not authorized, and is explicitly illegal under specific laws that were intended to cover this exact situation.\n\nFirst, FISA passed by Congress thirty years ago explicitly states the conditions under which surveillance can be conducted, and was passed specifically to address monitoring of US citizens communicating with people in another country, where one or more were suspected of being a threat. FISA requires that even in an emergency, the wiretapping agency get a warrant from a judge within 72 hours AFTER the tap is initiated. This defeats any argument made about their not being enough time to act within the bounds of law, and Bush has admitted that he's never even applied for the warrants afterwards in an attempt to obey with the law.\n\nInterestingly, some of big names opposing FISA being passed thirty-years ago include Bush Sr., Rumsfeld and Cheney. So, they were told, by Congress explicitly, that they ideas about inherent presidential authority were wrong. So, not only is Bush breaking the law, but he's breaking a law that was specifically set up to govern this very action, after his top advisors were told what the law was in this exact situation.\n\nSecond, there is the ridiculous claim that Bush is acting under the Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF), which the administration argues implicitly allows such actions. However, the AUMF is two paragraphs long, and states only that Bush is authorized to send military troops to Afghanistan, pursuant to the War Powers Act.\n\nWhat does the War Powers Act say? It limits presidential authority to send troops or deploy domestic assets unless authorized by Congress (since only Congress can declare war, and only Congress has jurisdiction for making domestic laws). The War Powers Act also specifically says that the President does not get any implied powers under this law, and that the President must obey all existing laws even when exercising explicit powers.\n\nYou can't claim implied powers based on a law that says "no implied powers". That's basic legal theory 101. It's like trying to argue it doesn't count as treason because the traitor chooses to call it something else. Performing actions that explicitly breaking laws that were intended to cover this exact situation is breaking the law, pure and simple.
635765
Because the congress is mostly all Republicans that have their noses so far up Bush;s but that they are about to suffocate Maybe if he would go get a B.J. from  an intern and was a Democrat they would  impeach him. The way it is now t6hey are all afraid if they turn on him all of their shady dealing will also get exposed
482584
It has caused a critical imbalance in the separation of powers doctrine, where the Executive thinks he can ignore federal laws passed by Congress, and thinks he can ignore court holdings by the Supreme Court.\n\nAnd the most frightening thing is that there are people out there in large numbers who don't see a problem with this type of pre-tyranny. They don't realize that all great tyrannies started when the Executive decided that the laws and the rules didn't apply to them.\n\nWe've lost the rule of law, because the Executive doesn't think laws should be followed if he doesn't like them. And because the Executive is responsible for enforcing the laws, if he chooses to ignore them, there is apparently no accountability.\n\nBush and his administration are the single greatest threat to the integrity of this country since the Civil War. Not because he's making bad choices -- every president does that. He's a threat because he is single-handedly destroying the balance of power that the framers of the Constitution spent so much time establishing.\n\nThanks to Bush, the terrorists are on the verge of winning, by turning this country into one where laws don't matter.
352664
I Don't it is a mess, and getting deeper into a quagmier every day. Two arrested for solisiting a minor yesterday and it comes out that Bush authoized the leak that put the cia agents life in jeoprady because he didn't like her husband. A repuglican majority congress cannot agree that the word illegal should mean something. We are in a sad state of affairs.
497254
The Senate shot it down.  The House passed it and the Senate would not, they are supposed to present another bill sometime this week, as to whether it gets to Bush or not is another thing.  Anyway he is a politician from Tejas, what possible benefit would slowing the flow of illegal immigration be to him?  It's not like Cheney could be elected.  Thank God!!
513252
It's illegal.\n\nPeople who casually break the law purely for their own pleasure are poor citizens.
80745
People are just looking for another reason to attack President Bush.  The Democrats and ACLU didn't have a problem with it under President Clinton.\n\n"The Department of Justice believes- and the case law supports- that the president has inherent authority to conduct warrantless physical searches for foreign intelligence purposes and that the president may, as he has done, delegate this authority to the attorney general."\n-Jamie S. Gorelick, Deputy Attorney General, 1994 (The same Gorelick who sat on the 9/11 Commission).
488173
This is a dictatorship. Presidency R, House R, Senate R, Supreme Court R, = Dictator. Nobody to oppose him or their party right now. No vote from the people. The mans ratings are 30%, and in Congress it's only 35% that are really supporting president Bush. The Republicans are bailing daily on his Presidency. I look for indictments coming after the November elections. Impeachment could be imminent.