All the Democratic presidential candidates agree President George W. Bush acted unconstitutionally and a violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA) by authorising NSA to eavesdrop on US citizens without a warrant, but not one of them supported Sen. Russ Feingold's move to censure the President for it, analysis by Council on Foreign Relations shows.
Leading candidate Sen. Joe R. Biden called “unconstitutional” and an “illegal expansion of presidential power” in a January 2006 Miami Herald op-ed, and then voted to confirm Michael Hayden, the man who administered the NSA wiretapping program, as CIA director.
"There is nothing the president needed to do to protect Americans that could not have been done through FISA," Bidden wrote in an op-ed. "Since 1979, the FISA court has received some 19,000 requests and approved all but five of them. The administration's assertion that it needed to bypass the court is out of bounds."
The other Democrat Senators in the race, including Hillary Clinton, Chris Dodd, and Barack Obama, all opposed Hayden's confirmation, but none of them voted for Feingold's censure motion.
"This is part of a general stance by this Administration that it can operate with no restraints," Obama said in floor statement on Hayden's nomination. "President Bush is interpreting Article II of the Constitution as giving him authority with no bounds. The Attorney General and a hand full of scholars agree with this view, and I don't doubt the sincerity with which the President and his lawyers believe this constitutional interpretation. However, the overwhelming weight of legal authority is against the President on his unbounded authority without any checks or balances. This is not how our Constitution is designed."
Representative Dennis Kucinich, New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson and 2004 vice presidential candidate John Edwards all spoke out against President's wiretapping, but none of them publicly supported Feingold's censure motion.
In the Republican camp, only Sen. John McCain and Rep. Ron Paul criticised Bush for authorising warrantless wiretapping.
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