So what say you Mr. Gonzales

The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee said Sunday he has asked
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to testify during open hearings on the
legality of the Bush administration’s domestic spying program.

Hearings are planned for early February into the National Security Agency
program that President Bush approved in 2002, said Sen. Arlen Specter (news,
bio, voting record), R-Pa. They will examine whether the congressional
resolution authorizing the president to use force against Iraq allowed
eavesdropping without a court order, as the administration contends, he
said.

Gonzales’ testimony is being sought because he is the principle spokesman
for the administration’s position, Specter said.

The attorney general was White House counsel when Bush initiated the
program, a role that could raise issues of attorney-client privilege in
seeking his testimony. A message left with the Justice Department on Sunday
was not immediately returned.

Asked on CBS’s “Face the Nation” if Gonzales had agreed to appear,
Specter said, “Well, I didn’t ask him if he had agreed. I told him we were
holding the hearings and he didn’t object. I don’t think he has a whole lot
of choice on testifying.”

Academics and others will be asked to appear, part of a list of witnesses
“who think the president was right and people who think the president was
wrong,” Specter said.

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here.

It should be interesting to hear how Gonzales tries to spin this in favor of
the President. Brownback also reaffirmed his standing on the hearing today (via
Think Progress):

STEPHANOPOULOS: Are you confident that the administration has acted
lawfully in this case?

BROWNBACK: I think we need to hold hearings on it and we’re going to.
Both in the intelligence committee, there will be closed hearings and then
the judiciary committee will have open hearings.

I think we need to look at this case and this issue. I am troubled by
what the basis for the grounds that the administration says that they did
these on, the legal basis, and I think we need to look at that far more
broadly and understand it a great deal.

I think this is something that bears looking into and us to be able to
establish a policy within constitutional frameworks of what a president can
or cannot do.

STEPHANOPOULOS: You don’t think the 9/11 resolution gave the president
the authority for this program?

BROWNBACK: It didn’t, in my vote. I voted for that resolution. That was a
week after 9/11. There was nothing you were going to do to stop us from
going to war in Afghanistan, but there was no discussion in anything that I
was around that that gave the president a broad surveillance authority with
that resolution.

This is shaping up to be a very interesting hearing. True just the fact it is
the first oversight hearing the Republican ran Congress has held against Bush
makes it that much more interesting.