Goldsmith is the latest of a small, but increasingly vocal group of conservative legal practitioners and legal scholars who have expressed deep concerns with Bush's expanded use of executive power at the expense of the system of checks and balances.
In an article in
Slate last week, Bruce Fein, an Assistant AG in the Reagan Justice Department, suggested that there is enough evidence of 5+ years of FISA violations specifically authorized by Bush to justify an impeachment inquiry. He further suggested that Bush's use of signing statements with the Patriot Act to ignore the Act's requirements for the FBI to inform Congress of the use of national security letters was also a blantant abuse of power.
Earlier this year, Fein and several other Reagan-era true conservatives (Bob Barr, Richard Viguerie) created the
American Freedom Agenda :
An alliance of prominent national conservatives today announced the formation of the American Freedom Agenda (AFA), a campaign to restore governmental checks and balances and civil liberties protections under assault by the current Administration....
....“We’ve spent the greater part of our lives working to build a national network of like-minded conservatives who remain true to the founding principles of our country, outlined in our Constitution, and we do not believe that any President– Republican or Democrat – trumps these principles. “We plan to work through our networks, and to reach out to all Americans, regardless of partisan or ideological affiliation, to build a movement that demands that our government return to those principles upon which our nation was founded.”
They have a 10-point "freedom pledge":
1.No Military Commissions Except on the Battlefield
2. No Evidence Extracted by Torture or Coercion
3. No Detaining Citizens as Unlawful Enemy Combatants
4. Restoring Habeas Corpus for Suspected Alien Enemy Combatants
5. Prohibiting Warrantless Spying bythe National Security Agency in Violation of Law
6. Renouncing Presidential Signing Statements
7. Ending Secret Government by Invoking State Secrets Privilege
8. Stopping Extraordinary Renditions
9. Stopping Threats to Prosecuting Journalists under the Espionage Act
10. Ending the Listing of Individuals or Organizations as Terrorists Based on Secret Evidence
http://www.americanfreedomagenda.org...edompledge.htm
The issue of executive power is a partisan issue, but the partisan divide is not necessarily between liberals and conservatives, but between those who believe in the systems of checks and balances/separation of powers as opposed to those who believe a President should have the right to act unilaterally and decide solely on the legality of executive powers.