Bush Abuses 9/11 Resolution

Ari Melber at the Huffington Post wonders if Congress is going to call the White House on their BS defense of the warrantless wiretapping program as they have when they used the 9/11 resolution in appropriate ways before...

The Bush Administration's "new" defense of warrantless domestic spying sounds just like its old defense: the 9/11 resolution supposedly empowers the President to take actions that the resolution doesn't even mention.

You don't need to be a lawyer to know it's hard to authorize something without mentioning it.

But Bush's lawyers have claimed the 9/11 resolution authorized all sorts of actions it never mentioned.

Big things, like going to war with Iraq. And Syria. And now warrantless spying on Americans....

...Today the White House is facing a fierce backlash for claiming the 9/11 resolution authorizes spying. Specter, now Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, probably felt some déjà vu last week, when he had to tell George Stephanopoulos that the 9/11 authorization did not allow domestic spying either. We have to wait and see if he acknowledges this Administration pattern in his February oversight hearings on the spy program...