According to the
QandO Blog, John Boehner had a conference call with conservative bloggers in January and expressed support for an investigation into the constitutionality of Bush's wiretapping. During the call, Jon Henke of QandO asked Boehner about his position on the NSA scandal:
(more below)
Jon Henke: Mr. Congressman, on the NSA warrantless surveillance issue, do you believe the President has the inherent authority to do what he has been doing? Or do you think we need to codify the process somehow?
Rep. John A. Boehner: I think that it's unclear to me. Now the President, clearly, and his people believe that they have the ability to do this and frankly I'm very interested in hearings to see in how, I mean they've attempted to justify it, but frankly I want to make, if it's not clear in the law or Constitution today, it ought to be made clear in a law or the Constitution that he can do this and what the limits are. But at this point, I'm not, it's not clear in my mind under that he has, under what authority he has to get it done.
Jon Henke: Would you support an investigation to look into that question?
Rep. John A. Boehner: I would. I'd think it would be of interest of all Americans to get to the bottom of how does this happen? Under what authority? And what are the protections?
There is a complete transcript of Boehner's blogger conference call at Truth Laid Bare as well.
We now have quite a few elected Republican officials coming out with statements expressing concern for Bush's NSA program. Among these conservatives who have made statements I count: Sens. Brownback, Hagel, Snowe, Specter, Lugar, Collins, Sununu, Craig, Graham, McCain; Rep Wilson, and now Majority Leader Boehner. I think we can expect some more to come out as time goes on. We need to get some more quotes from other conservatives. There are probably several more Republicans out there who just havent been specifically asked about it yet.