If it is okay for Bush to spy why was Nixon impeached for spying?
153112
Nixon wasn't impeached, he resigned for spying on his political opponents.\n\nThe Bush administration is monitoring terrorist communications and, when they contact someone in the USA, they investigate that person also.\n\nSame thing the cops do in drug busts and prostitution rings.\n\nThis is just more Bush bashing.
30688
The current controversy really boils down to how much evidence & authorization agencies like the CIA need in order to justify spying on someone.\n\nHistorically (in recent decades, anyway), it has never been 'official' policy to authorize spying without probably cause (evidence & good reason to believe someone is engaged in illegal activity), and approval from a judge - this is all part of the USA's system of checks & balances on our government.\n\nCurrent laws & policy statements circumvent these balances of power, and could allow the 'secret' agencies of our law enforcement system to spy on innocent citizen without justification.\n\nThe most disturbing developments have been recent claims from the White House which imply that the current administration considers itself above the law - saying that it does not need to seek approval from the legislative & judicial branches to carry out such activities (even though our Constitution, laws, and legal precendence say that it does).
927340
During Nixon's administration, Rep. VP Agnew was caught cheating on his taxes by the IRS. He resigned his office. Nixon then appointed Gerald Ford to take his place. When the Watergate burglary investigation was implicating Pres. Nixon, Nixon resigned and Rep. VP Gerald Ford became President, appointing Rockefeller  to the VP opening. The U.S. then had a President AND Vice President that was never elected by the people. Ford gave Nixon immunity  from prosecution for any crimes he may have committed while in office.\n\nNow give me all those thumbs down..........I love em'. \n\nThis set a double standard of justice in our country. While ordinary citizens were being prosecuted and jailed for far lesser crimes, President Nixon received the so called "Get out of jail free" card. It defied the U.S. Constitutional Bill of Rights concerning "equal justice".
58612
It was an attempted impeachment by The House of Reps.  Clinton was NOT impeached from his position as President of the United States.\n\nMy, my JETDOC, must be you haven't met up with Monica ;)  Maybe you should.  Your tongue...no, your type is sarcastic and undeserved, maybe such a release would loosen your stiffness some ;).  Must be a BUSH fan =)).  My thought is lying about a little oral sodomy does not compare to what BUSH has done to this country with his continued lies.  Such a comparison of lies..I still know who I'd choose...nothing like the smell of a sweet cigar!\n\njl_jack09, my apology for responding to JETDOC in your space...and I stand corrected by the happy man for my error in understanding.\n\nxo
855759
Yes, he lied about the reasons to go into war which has caused the deaths of people he is sworn to protect. If Clinton could be impeached for lying about his private sex life, then Bush can be impeached for some far more sinister.
199281
Just to correct an answer--Nixon was NOT impeached, but certainly would have been.  He resigned first.\n\nIt'd be nice of some of these responses would reach beyond the last 10 years.  We've had presidents around for close to 250 years now, and some of them were pretty awful compared to any recent ones.\n\nI understand Ulysses S. Grant was nothing more than a sentimental war hero choice and spent his term pretty much drunk.  Herbert Hoover presided over the 1929 stock market crash and the Great Depression, without being able to do anything to impact either.
1005960
FEBRUARY 21, 2006 – In these highly-charged political times, it is the word that dare not speak its name:  impeachment. Democrats and other opponents of the President, as well as people in the media, are afraid to raise the topic for fear of being called too partisan or extreme.\n\nBut the startling revelation of the President’s warrantless wiretapping campaign may be the straw that broke the camel's back: In the halls of Congress and on the front pages of a growing number of mainstream periodicals, impeachment is being discussed more and more openly. And many leading constitutional scholars agree: there has never been so strong a case for impeachment since Richard Nixon.\n\nIn ARTICLES OF IMPEACHMENT AGAINST GEORGE W. BUSH, Michael Ratner, Bill Goodman and other experts at one of our nation's leading institutions of constitutional scholarship, the Center for Constitutional Rights, set out the legal arguments for impeachment in a clear, concise, and objective discussion. In four separate articles of impeachment detailing four separate charges –warrantless surveillance, misleading Congress on the reasons for the Iraq war, violating laws against torture, and subverting the Constitution’s separation of powers – it is, say the CCR attorneys, a case of black letter law, with abundant evidence.\n\nARTICLES OF IMPEACHMENT AGAINST GEORGE W. BUSH details that evidence, the relevant laws and the legal precedents. It also explains what the Constitution says about impeachment – an informative discussion further illuminated by supplemental material that includes a history of impeachment, explanation of its procedures, and the previous articles of impeachment brought against Presidents Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton.\n\nWith leading Republicans calling for investigations of the domestic spying campaign, a special prosecutor investigating the suppression of evidence used to launch the Iraq war, and hearings on innumerable instances of torture, ARTICLES OF IMPEACHMENT AGAINST GEORGE W. BUSH may be more timely than any of us would like to admit.
798355
Nothing.  Nixon taught people not to keep evidence.
193742
The Consitution calls for a specific circumstance to have happened before impeachment - High Crimes and Misdemeanors must have been committed. That is why the Starr investigation went on for years and years, costing 40 million dollars: an actual crime had to be found before the pre-arranged impeachment show could begin.\n\nMost people are calling for President Bush to be impeached because 'He lied about the war!' Thanks again to the Clinton/Starr Travelling Road Show, the concept of what a lie actually is has been dreadfully skewed. Further, according to the Sundance documentary "Corporation" in a case where employees of Fox sued alleging illegal firing under the Whistleblower Statute because they refused orders to include what they felt to be erroneous information in a news telecast, a Federal Court issued a ruling in favor of Fox stating that there was no protection against this firing because "lying on television is not a crime." If what President Bush had said was indeed a lie instead of a different yet equally strongly felt opinion, because of the separation of powers he was not under any sort of restrictive oath either from Congress or any Court at the time. The Clinton "no sex" lie/opinion was illegal because he repeated while under oath as it the defendant in a related lawsuit.\n\nIf 50% of our population couldn't be bothered to get off their couches and cast their votes one way or the other in 2004, I think trying to create another fabricated impeachment crisis will only make our political process even more of a joke and make even more foreign populations look at our democratic model even more cynically.
322614
In February of 1973 the Senate established the Special Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities to investigate.  In late July the House Judiciary Committee adopted three articles of impeachment, accusing President Nixon of obstruction of justice for impeding the Watergate investigation, of abuse of power for his partisan use of the FBI and IRS, and of contempt of Congress for refusing to obey a congressional subpoena to release the tapes.\n\nCheckmated, Nixon conceded in a televised address on August 5 that he had withheld relevant evidence.\n\nOn August 9, 1974, Richard Nixon became the first president to resign, and Gerald Ford took office as the nation's first chief executive to have been elected neither president nor vice president.
1005436
Well never know.\n\nFrom what I read, people didn't believe Nixon could have known about that watergate thing.
26297
Bush is by far the worst president we have ever had. Watergate was spying on the other political patry, while what Bush is doing is spying on the general public, and that is horrible.
733067
Nixon had to be impeached before he would resign, I don't think George Bush will do anything any different as a sociopath like Richard Nixon was.
166564
Nixon tried the war bit as an excuse as well for wiretapping without a warrent and it didn't work for him so I think Bush has some trouble looming in the near future about that.  Add in other things done and I think we got a mess coming in the not so distant future!
412620
No issues.Ford was not elected and pardoned elected Nixon.Carter was running for elections and had nothing to do with watergate.
1163211
It was Nixon in the Watergate scandal\nReagan in the Iran Contra scandal\nBush has out done them all as far as I can see.
931041
I would not hold my breath. While it is true that impeachment can be brought with a simple majority in the House which the Democrats have, a 2/3 majority is required to remove a president from office, which they don't have. Republicans will not vote to remove the president. You can count on this, there will be investigations, there will be subpoenas and the end there will be convictions and resignations of lower officials. This is common in these type of affairs as few people can stand up to full Congressional scrutiny in an open ended witch hunt. In the end the investigations will be costly to the American taxpayers and they will be fruitless as far as the intended and desired ends. In short an absolute waste of time and money. You also need to remember that the American public has consistently stated in polls that they are against this type of activity and prefer that the Democrats concentrate on legislation rather than revenge. They should be very careful because this process has the potential to blow up in their faces and cost them dearly in the next election. Mr. Bush cannot stand for office again and Mr. Cheney is not going to run for president.\n\nplanksheer: Nixon committed numerous actions designed to obstruct justice. Some of these actions were very public including the firing of the Special Prosecutor and court actions to protect the tapes. In the end Mr. Nixon resigned because Republicans were not going to support. He would have been impeached and he would have been removed from office. The public was also very against Mr. Nixon. To date no evidence has been presented against Mr. Bush that could even come close to a parallel with Nixon. That could change of course during investigations, but the Nixon comparison is weak at best. You would be better served to look at the result of Iran/Contra as this is closer to what might actually happen.