Reuters reports that “Democratic and Republican calls mounted on Tuesday for U.S. congressional hearings into President George W. Bush’s assertion that he can order warrantless spying on Americans with suspected terrorist ties.” According to Aljazeera.net:
Chuck Hagel and Olympia Snowe, Republican Senators, joined Carl Levin, Dianne Feinstein and Ron Wyden, Democratic Senators on Tuesday in calling for a joint investigation by the Senate Intelligence and Judiciary Committees into whether the government eavesdropped “without appropriate legal authority” … [b]ut the White House on Tuesday brushed aside calls for congressional hearings [saying] “This is still a highly classified programme and there are details that it’s important not be disclosed.”
Meanwhile, a judge has resigned from the FISA court which is supposed to provide warrants for such eavesdropping, “concerned that information gained from the warrantless surveillance under Bush’s program could have then been used to obtain warrants under the FISA program.” The spying appears to have included purely domestic calls as well.