The Attorney General's (dis)Honesty

Next Monday, attorney General (and Bush Texas crony) Alberto Gonzales come before the US Senate to defend the secret domestic surveillance program recently revealed by the NY Times. When he gets there Senator Russ Feingold will call him out on what appears to be a lie* he made to the congress during his confirmation hearing.
*In Red America Republicans never lie. I am using language from the old USA.

Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) charged yesterday that Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales misled the Senate during his confirmation hearing a year ago when he appeared to try to avoid answering a question about whether the president could authorize warrantless wiretapping of U.S. citizens. In a letter to the attorney general yesterday, Feingold demanded to know why Gonzales dismissed the senator's question about warrantless eavesdropping as a "hypothetical situation" during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in January 2005. At the hearing, Feingold asked Gonzales where the president's authority ends and whether Gonzales believed the president could, for example, act in contravention of existing criminal laws and spy on U.S. citizens without a warrant.

Sen. Russell Feingold asked about warrantless eavesdropping, and the nominee called it "hypothetical.",'Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) charged yesterday that Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales misled the Senate during his
confirmation hearing a year ago when he appeared to try to avoid answering a question about whether the president could authorize warrantless wiretapping of
U.S. citizens.',Gonzales said that it was impossible to answer such a hypothetical question but that it was "not the policy or the agenda of this president" to authorize actions that conflict with existing law. He added that he would hope to alert Congress if the president ever chose to authorize warrantless surveillance, according to a transcript of the hearing.In fact, the president did secretly authorize the National Security Agency to begin warrantless monitoring of calls and e-mails between the United States and other nations soon after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The program, publicly revealed in media reports last
month, was unknown to Feingold and his staff at the time Feingold questioned
Gonzales, according to a staff member. Feingold's aides developed the 2005
questions based on privacy advocates' concerns about broad interpretations of
executive power.Gonzales was White House counsel at the time the
program began and has since acknowledged his role in affirming the president's authority to launch the surveillance effort. Gonzales is scheduled to testify Monday before the Senate Judiciary Committee on the program's legal rationale.