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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TigerPaw who wrote (8799)	1/12/2006 10:07:57 AM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541517

That is where an impeachment trial would be effective. An impeachment trial wouldn't be effective because the deed, the warrantless searches, would have long since been done. The impeachment trial would, instead, be punitive. I suppose it might be effective against future acts in that it would give subsequent presidents pause. But it might also just drive them to be more secretive and more careful.

To: TigerPaw who wrote (8799)	1/12/2006 10:16:26 AM
From: epicure	Respond to of 541517

agreed

To: TigerPaw who wrote (8799)	1/12/2006 1:33:50 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541517

That is where an impeachment trial would be effective. Hardly. If someone snoops on a call between an Al Qaida operative overseas and on in the US without a warrant you are never going to get an impeachment over it. It might not be directly ordered by the president. Likely it will never even be known outside of a very small circle of people. If cops have information from an illegal search and they know it won't be admissible, they probably won't mention it in court and the defense, the jury, the judge and the population at large will never know about it. The exclusionary rule still has an effect because the police and the prosecutors don't want evidence that favors their case to be excluded. They have an incentive to keep their searches legal, even if no one would ever know about the illegal searches. That same incentive doesn't apply in intelligence gathering. If the questionable search is never widely known (which is likely) there is unlikely to be any repercussions. Even if it is widely known it is extremely unlikely that any congress would impeach any president over this, even if the presidents party is the minority party in congress. As low as Bush's poll ratings have been its unlikely that you could even get a majority of democrats to vote for impeachment on this issue. Getting a majority of the whole house to so vote, and then getting a supermajority of the senate to convict would be next to impossible. Tim