On March 13, Feingold introduced a resolution in the Senate to censure President Bush in response to his illegal wiretapping.

There’s yet another reason to be proud of the state of Wisconsin, and his name is Russ Feingold.

Feingold, the junior senator from Wisconsin, has been serving the state since 1993, having been elected most recently in 2004. He has always voted on his principles, and his votes have always made sense.

For example, Feingold opposed the war on Iraq, and because of this strong opposition, voted against the authorization of force given to President Bush by Congress. However, Feingold has strong feelings of support for the troops, and has shown this in voting in favor of giving the military more money for the war.

He was also the only senator to initially vote against the USA Patriot Act, citing grave concerns for its possible misuse and detriment to civil liberties.

Now, Feingold is reaching new heights. On March 13, Feingold introduced a resolution in the Senate to censure President Bush in response to his illegal wiretapping.

In his own words, Feingold has said that the “president authorized an illegal program to spy on American citizens on American soil, and then misled Congress and the public about the existence and legality of that program.”

To be fair to the president, we don’t yet know if he has actually spied on Americans who weren’t involved in terrorism. But what is known is that the Bush administration has spied on Americans without obtaining a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant.

The act makes it illegal for the president to electronically spy on Americans without a warrant from a secret act-established court; however, the act allows the president three days in times of peace and 15 days in times of war after he has made a wiretap to obtain a legal warrant.

This grants his administration the ability to tap a phone line in emergency situations faster while still being able to get a warrant after the fact. Clearly, Bush’s program needs to be examined further.

And it is because of the party-line vote in the Senate Intelligence Committee that allowed President Bush to continue his wiretapping without a full investigation that Feingold introduced this censure resolution.

There are those, however, who have taken what Feingold has done and spun it. For example, Vice President Dick Cheney has said that Feingold is “(proposing) that we ought to protect our enemies' ability to communicate as it plots against America …” and implies that Feingold has “decided the president is the enemy.”

U.S. Rep. John Boehner, the newly appointed House Majority Leader, said, “Sometimes you begin to wonder if he's (Feingold) more interested in the safety and security of the terrorists as opposed to the American people.”

But Cheney and Boehner know this is not Feingold’s stance. Feingold has repeatedly stated that he supports President Bush’s wiretapping of terrorists. He is only questioning the method that Bush uses when he taps into an American citizen’s phone, and why he does so illegally.

“No one questions — no one questions — whether the government should wiretap suspected terrorists,” Feingold said. “Of course we should, and we can under the current law.”

It’s no wonder that this man of principle gets elected over and over again in such a great state like our own. Support our senator, and help get the truth out.

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