Jonathon Turley, professor of Law for George Washington University, gave a
very stern opening statement. He said the President has committed a crime by
ignoring FISA. While we can argue his motivation the issue of the law is
certain. He went into details of when he worked for the NSA as a law clerk and
spent time in the FISA court. He called the court “The most user friendly law a
President has ever been given.” He finished by saying that the President
assuming “inherited authority” is the “most dangerous claim of all”.

Rep Robert Wexler of Florida really hit it hard during his questioning. He
said the spying on of Quaker groups had nothing to do with “Iraq, al Qaeda, or
the SOB who threatened us yesterday”. Richard Hersh of the Truth Project whose
Quaker church was spied on by the Pentagon sparked the response by telling the
panel who attended their church when the Pentagon decided to spy on them. It was
full of grandmothers and family people. No one has a single tie or name even
closely tied to terrorism. Their only crime is opposing the war and that is not
a crime in the United States but a crime in the totalitarian mind of George
Bush.

The hearing was extremely informative and if you didn’t get a chance to
listen to it I suggest you check out
http://www.c-span.org for times they will be replaying it. If anything was
learned today it is that we need full congressional hearings, hopefully joint
hearings similar to those of Iran Contra in order to resolve this issue. Every
American in this country should be worried about this and demanding these
hearings from their representatives and Senators.