Which other instance were you referrimg to? Ford "surrendered" to the Vietnamese two and a half years earlier.
FISA was a perfectly reasonable response to the excesses of the Nixon administration and was extremely popular at the time. Of course he sighned it.
And Carter was laboring under a disadvantage that Bush doesn't share. He is an honest man with a real regard for the United States of America.

Oh, gosh. Let's see. The failed Iranian hostage rescue attempt. He surrendered the Panama Canal. He surrenedered America to a "great malaise." Don't mistake weakness for honesty, IB.

Carter didn't "surrender" the panama canal. The 99 year lease on it ran out and he turned it back over to it's rightful owners.
Nobody "surendered" the country to the great malaise. It occured do to a combination of things that had been building since the end of the second world war. He merely coined the phrase and pointed out that things were going to get worse before they got better. In short, he told the unvarnished truth to the American people and they never forgave him for it. He didn't use a 3 trillion dollar line of credit that his grandchildren were going to pay off in order to make things look better than they were. He left that to Reagan. And now your hero, Bush is doing the same thing.
The hostage rescue failed because he had inherited a "hollowed out, ineffective military". Not my words, General Westmorelands. He also pushed the largest single pay increase we ever got through congress in 1980 in an attempt to fix the problem. And this without increasing overall military spending because he wasn't waisting money on "Star Wars" or any other vast strategic weapons programs that were never going to be used.
Don't try to pass off honesty for weakness, Aaron.

Now let's get back to the real issue, which Aaron is trying to avoid with a personal attack on a former American President, like the disloyal, America hating party aparatchik he is.
By signing FISA, President Carter made it illegal to spy on private communications within the United States without a warrant issued by the FISA court. Bush unilaterally chose to ignore that law. If Aaron was an honest man, like for instance President Carter, he would be calling for the impeachment and arrest of the criminal in the Whitehouse.

Wouldn't not grabbing power make him more ... conservative?

And don't forget that Clinton surrendered his DNA! Heh.

You all are WAY too serious.

FIRST, IB, surrender is not used technically. You act like there must be a document with terms of surrender on it for everything I mention for my statement to be true.

All I mean is that his presidency is one of nothing but apathy and malaise and a give up attitude (Americas best days were behind her).

And don't get all high and mighty about me talking trash about a former president. That's something that Jimmy Carter was doing long before me. What a class act.

Ok, great. Carter's presidency was a failure. Now back to your hero, the felon.
You're still trying to change the subject away from the main intent of Senator Spector's question.
Bush broke the law when he ordered the NSA to start tapping peoples phones without applying for a warrant from the FISA court. That makes him a criminal. And without a doubt rises to the level of an impeachable offense.
But you'd much rather badmouth a President who served honorably, something which cannot be said of Bush, than deal with the issue of what should be done with a political leader with zero respect for the laws of this country and no regard for the people of the United States.
Every time you use what you seem to think is a politically glib personal attack to try to move the conversation away from the main point, I am going to call you on it.

Give us a break Aaron. You were nothing but a twinkle in your Mamma's eye when Carter was sworn in as President and you were still wetting the bed when he went out. Don't presume to tell us what his Presidency was about.

I'm no legal scholar, but can a sitting president "renounce" the authority granted the executive by the Constitution? Doesn't the Constitution trump statute, even if the Congress passed it, and the president signed it? Secondly, go to Powerlineblog.com for some interesting discussions on the case law and opinions relating to FISA and the NSA program. Seems there's a lot of law backing up the Pres's position.

Laint: Here's the difference in leadership: Carter said things are bad (honest), and we'd better get used to it. Reagan came along and said things are bad, but this is NOT who we are, this is not how things have to stay, we'll rise above it and here's how we're going to do it. Carter surrendered to the malaise. Reagan didn't. One of those two positions is called leadership.

Thank you. That's exactly the point I was trying to make.