The following text in arial font was written by Congressman Dan Lungren's staff (and approved by Congressman Lungren) in response to the looney Left's calls for President Bush's impeachment. Since letters containing this text have gone out to constituents, the text is in the public domain and should also be subject to FOIA requests. I've attributed the work to lungren's staff and in no way, shape, or form am I claiming this work to be my own, nor do I claim any rights to the following text. I am simply posting the text to inform both the Right and the lunatic Left as to why the calls for Bush's impeachment are shrill political screechings and have NO basis in law. As if the Left would care if there were a legal basis anyway.

Article II Section 4 of the United States Constitution provides:
The President, Vice President and all Civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.

It is in my view not appropriate for this provision to be used for the purpose of constitutionalizing differences over policy. The question of treason, bribery, and other high crimes and misdemeanors is not relevant to the current debate over Administration policy. For example, the issue of NSA wiretaps does not even come close to the constitutional standard for impeachment. I would point out that as the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York in U.S. v. bin Laden has acknowledged, warrantless foreign intelligence collection has been an established practice of the Executive Branch for decades. It is interesting to note that this case, which preceded the current Administration, involved the surveillance of an American citizen. In fact, in both the Carter Administration, and the Clinton Administration warrantless searches were conducted. Former Deputy Attorney General John Schmidt, who served during the tenure of Attorney General Janet Reno, has written in the December 21, 2005 edition of the Chicago Tribune that:
President Bush’s post-September 11, 2001 authorization to the National Security Agency to carry out electronic surveillance into private phone calls and e-mails is consistent with court decisions and with the positions of the Justice Department under prior presidents.

Critics of the decision by President Bush have argued that the President should have used the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act procedures to obtain a FISA Court warrant. First of all it stretches credulity to suggest that the President was required by law to do so. The court with appellate jurisdiction over the FISA Court issued an opinion in 2002 relating to the issue of Presidential authority to conduct warrantless foreign surveillance searches. The court stated that, “We take for granted that the President does have that authority and, assuming that is so, FISA could not encroach on the President’s constitutional power.” Accordingly, there is a sufficient legal and historical basis for the actions of President Bush concerning the surveillance program. The question is not whether one agrees with the policy, but rather, whether it rises to the constitutional standard for impeachment. In my view, it clearly does not.

Another justification offered by some concerning the impeachment issue concerns the war in Iraq. Although we did not find weapons of mass destruction, the United States was not alone in concluding that the intelligence pointed toward the conclusion that Iraq possessed such weapons. The British government looked at the same evidence and came to the same conclusion. In fact, the French government did not doubt that Iraq possessed such weapons but felt that the United Nations inspection process should be completed prior to taking any action against the nation of Iraq. Within the United States itself, this was not a partisan issue. The Clinton Administration was of the view that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. Accordingly, the decisions made concerning Iraq do not rise to the constitutional level concerning impeachment.

Again, it is my belief that differences over public policy do not form the basis for any consideration of impeachment. The actions of the Bush Administration do not come close to the threshold for this to be considered a legitimate issue.