We’ll have to see about that. It’s about time the Republican-led Congress did something to retrieve its honour, given the abysmal performance of the past five years.

Norm

I think we’ve just seen that even though the Republicans control the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches of government, there is a limit to the amount of executive power that the Republican Congress will give Bush. They don’t want him to make them look like fools by stripping them of their legal authority to check the power of the president. Some of them aren’t ready for a dictatorship.

Senator Graham said it best when replying to Gonzales’s argument that the president has the inherent power under the Constitution to conduct warrantless wiretaps on American citizens:

“Taken to its logical conclusion, it concerns me that it could basically neuter the Congress and weaken the courts.”

“And when the nation’s at war, I would argue, Mr. Attorney General, you need checks and balances more than ever.”

Graham was one of the five of ten Republicans on the eighteen-member Judiciary Committee that didn’t accept Alberto Gonzales’s justifications for the NSA spying program.

This defection by five influential Republicans makes me think that this might be one thing that Bush won’t get away with.