Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) started his questioning of Attorney General Mukasey by asking about the President’s Article II powers under the Constitution.

“Do you think that the President can break any law he pleases because he’s the President — including, say, statutes banning torture?”

“I can’t contemplate any situation in which this president would assert Article II authority to do something that the law forbids,” Mukasey said.

“Well, he did just that when he violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act?” Specter responded. “Didn’t he?”

Well, “both of those issues have been brought within statutes,” Mukasey responded, mumbling.

“That’s not the point,” Specter pressed. “The point is that he acted in violation of statutes, didn’t he?”

“I don’t know,” Mukasey conceded, after a pause.

“There’s no dispute about that, is there? The law says you have to go to court to get a warrant for wiretapping and the administration didn’t do that.”

Mukasey then went into a description of the alleged problems with FISA regarding foreign to domestic communications.

“But I’m talking about wiretapping U.S. citizens in the United States,” Specter insisted.

He later asked what’s wrong with the issue of phone companies breaking the law being “front and center” in the debate?

No shit. If the prez is not above the law, he’s impeachment toast, right? Can you say ratings national TV networks?

I’ve now watched this three times today on C-SPAN, little of it has made the TV news or the wires, but it is on a few blogs, where you can also get the historic transcript: TPM-Muckraker

Later, Mukasey said it was because the Bush Justice Department did not want to reveal the “means and methods” of surveillance through the courts in lawsuits against the telecom companies.

But we already know what those means and methods are, do we not?

IMPEACH!

Ad 1: Specter later asked about contempt citations out against senior advisers to the president, such as Karl Rove, and Mukasy danced around the issue of executive privilege and immunity. This is complicated legal stuff, not for everyone, but it strikes me as historic viewing, however difficult. I hope C-SPAN keeps showing it…

Tags: Domestic Surveillance, Liberty vs. Security

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