On Eve of Hearing, Split on Spying
By Charlie Savage
The Boston Globe
Sunday 05 February 2006
Some prominent conservatives break with Bush.
Washington - As hearings begin tomorrow on President Bush's domestic spying program, increasing numbers of prominent conservatives are breaking with the administration to say the program is probably illegal and to sharply criticize Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales's legal theory that a wartime president can override a law.
The skeptics include leaders of conservative activist groups, well-known law professors, veterans of Republican administrations, former GOP members of Congress, and think tank analysts. The conservatives said they are speaking out because they object to the White House's attempt to portray criticism of the program as partisan attacks.
"My criteria for judging this stuff is what would a President Hillary do with these same powers," said Paul M. Weyrich, the influential writer and leader of the Free Congress Foundation, a think tank. "And if I'm troubled by what she would do, then I have to be troubled by what Bush could do, even though I have more trust in Bush than I do in Hillary."
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/020606J.shtml