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The Congressional Surveillance Hearings

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All day yesterday, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales spend hours justifying President Bush's program of domestic eavesdropping without court warrants in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

At the end of the day, the Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Arlen Specter, put it this way: the Bush administration's interpretation of law "just defies logic and plain English." And no "fair reading" of what Congress has done since 9/11, continued Specter, could justify the wiretapping.

And there it is. Bush is accused of subverting the fundamental checks and balances of the U.S. Constitution.

What, if anything, will this Republican Congress do now?

Guests:

Charles Babington, Congressional Correspondent for the Washington Post.;
David Keene, Chairman of the American Conservative Union. He served in the presidential campaigns of Ronald Reagan in 1976 and George HW Bush in 1980.;
Louis Fisher, Senior Specialist in Separation of Powers with the Congressional Research Service of the Library of Congress. He is also author of "Constitutional Conflicts between Congress and the President," which is considered a classic on the subject.;
Bob Graham, fellow at the Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. He's a former Governor of Florida, and 3-term Senator from Florida.

This program aired on February 7, 2006.

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