As you probably know, George W. Bush has admitted to authorizing the NSA to listen in on phone conversations of US citizens without a court order. The first authorization came in 2002 and he had reauthorized it 30 time. In 2004, one of the reauthorizations almost didn't happen when James Comey, then deputy attorney general, refused to sign on.

That prompted two of Bush's senior aides - Andrew Card Jr., his chief of staff, and Alberto Gonzales, then the White House counsel and now the attorney general - to make an emergency visit to John Ashcroft, then the attorney general, to try to persuade him to give his authorization, as required by White House procedures for the program.

Officials with knowledge of the events said that Ashcroft also appeared reluctant to sign on to the continued use of the program, and that the Justice Department's concerns appear to have led in part to the suspension of the program for several months. (International Herald Tribune)

You know you're really encroaching on civil liberties when even John Ashcroft won't go along with you. But what specific law does the warrantless wiretapping break? USC TITLE 18 PART I CHAPTER 19 § 371. The penalties for breaking that law:

An offense described in this section is punishable by a fine of not more than $10,000 or imprisonment for not more than five years, or both.

If none of this is enough to convince you that the wiretapping is wrong, then maybe Bush's own words will. This is what he said during the campaign in 2004 at Buffalo, NY, two years after he authorized the NSA wiretapping, and over one year before someone blew the whistle on him.

There are such things as roving wiretaps. Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires -- a wiretap requires a court order.

Nothing has changed, by the way. When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so.

It's important for our fellow citizens to understand, when you think Patriot Act, constitutional guarantees are in place when it comes to doing what is necessary to protect our homeland, because we value the Constitution (CNN).

If that's not a lie, then I've never heard one. He's right about the law and the constitution. This spying does require a court order. If there are people in the US, citizens or visitors, who are talking with al-Qaeda on the phone, then I'm all for the government listening in on what they say. Just get a court order! It's not that hard. That is a limit put on the government to protect our liberty. A court order requires that they have a good reason to suspect the person and that there is a record kept that they asked permission. So when Bush came out with his rhetoric in the State of the Union address about wanting to prevent another attack, he's giving us a red herring. We all want to prevent an attack. Let's do it within the law.

Bush has confessed on national television that he committed multiple felonies. And he lied about it in 2004. I don't want to use the I-word lightly, but need I remind you that our last president was impeached for lying about something far less serious than that?