'The President Ignores The Law At The President’s Peril.'

Cenk Uygur has an excellent post on dealing with the illegal spying program and the President's belief that the Constitution places him above the law and other branches, the censure resolution, and the quandary of putting ones hope in Arlen Specter...

Recommended read.

It starts-

We are told that censuring the president for breaking the FISA law is a political maneuver. If that is true, then I have a serious question: How do we get the president to act within the law in a non-political way?

It seems to me that Senator Feingold moved for a censure resolution because he believed he had no alternative.

I believe he is right. The Intelligence Committee absolutely refuses to investigate this matter any further. It looked like the Judiciary Committee had deadlocked and was not going anywhere -- so what alternative did a conscientious senator have but to push for some sort of action to get the president to obey the law?...

And this was my favorite part-

By the way, I love the irony of that -- I don't know if anyone noticed this, but the president didn't stop 9/11. Taking credit for that is a little more than bizarre. Could you imagine if FDR went around thumping his chest saying proudly, "Pearl Harbor happened on my watch!"?

The president hides behind the troops every time someone criticizes his policies. He shamelessly equates being against his incoherent and incompetent decisions with being against the troops. Then he has the nerve to turn around and say that his opponents are playing politics. If hypocrisy were a girl, I'd tell the president to stop teasing her. They've been together for so long, any decent man would have proposed already.

And he has this to say on Specter and the political punches he pulls-

All those compromises. Were they just to retain his own silly, meaningless power and stature? Or did he have some grand goal he wanted to work toward? He is now near the end of his career. There is an out of control president. The minority party is powerless to stop him. There needs to be one man who stands up for principle and constrains the president’s un-American power grab.

Personally, I admire Sen. Specter for pushing the hearings where his other colleagues have caved, but as we've seen (with Alito, etc.) in the end he always toes the line. And in an election year, I don't believe he'll take the risk of standing against his own party on this issue, no matter how right he knows he is. So I definitely support censure... and that's just for starters. This President has taken balance of governmental power to the extremes and thumbed his nose at the other branches and if you can't even exercise a parliamentary rebuke like censure against him.... boy, we are in trouble.

I believe the President has proven himself unfit for office and deserves to be removed, but very few want to go that far because some political hacks and the GOP spinners have poo-pooed the very notion as crazy or treasonous. But then I remember that in 2003 the Dixie Chicks created a national outrage simply by stating they were ashamed the President was their home state and how now no one can remember why that was a big deal. While we've come a long way from the irrational jingoism that dominated the political climate in 2002 and 2003, the President's supporters have still done a remarkable job in politically attacking anyone who questions his power. Republicans, and even most Democrats, are afraid to take action against this man (be it censure/impeachment or heck, even offering more than mild critiques), who now has only a fraction of the American people behind him. The logic behind this conventional wisdom is based more on fear than actual logic.

Tomorrow's the big day for censure. Let's see where everyone really stands.

[PS- A great analysis on this past Tuesday's hearings on the NSA program:
What the FISA judges really said]