US: Former US vice-president Al Gore has accused President George W Bush of breaking the law by authorising wiretaps on US citizens without court warrants. He called on Congress on Monday to reassert its oversight responsibilities on a "shameful exercise of power" by the White House.
"The president of the United States has been breaking the law repeatedly and insistently," Mr Gore said in a speech at Constitution Hall in Washington. "A president who breaks the law is a threat to the very structure of our government."
To restore a system of checks and balances to government, Mr Gore proposed appointing a special counsel to look into the domestic surveillance programme, developing new whistle-blower protections and not extending the Patriot Act. He urged members of Congress to "start acting like the independent and coequal branch of government you're supposed to be".
On the holiday marking the 77th birthday of the Rev Martin Luther King jnr, Mr Gore drew a parallel between the FBI's eavesdropping on the civil rights leader and the current eavesdropping by the National Security Agency on communications between Americans and what Mr Bush has said are suspected terrorists.
He also sought to cast the domestic surveillance programme as simply the latest extension of a "truly breathtaking expansion of executive power" by the Bush administration.
Mr Gore said this began when the White House used incorrect intelligence about whether Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction to justify invading it and has continued through the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal and the debate over whether torture may be used to extract information from detainees.
"The disrespect embodied in these apparent mass violations of the law is part of a larger pattern of seeming indifference to the constitution that is deeply troubling to Americans in both political parties," Mr Gore said.
The Bush administration's actions have "brought our republic to the brink of a dangerous breach in the fabric of the constitution", he added.
While Mr Gore's denunciation of the administration's domestic surveillance programme drew cheers from the crowd at the event, sponsored by the Liberty Coalition and the American Constitution Society, national public polling shows that Americans remain divided on the issue.
In the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll, 51 per cent said that "wiretapping of telephone calls and e-mails without court approval" was an acceptable tool for the federal government to use when investigating terrorism.
Forty-seven per cent said it was an unacceptable for the government to use those methods in order to catch suspected terrorists.
Senate judiciary committee chairman Arlen Specter (Republican) has called attorney general Alberto R. Gonzales to testify at a hearing about the eavesdropping programme.
Mr Specter said on Sunday that if Mr Bush broke the law in authorising wiretaps without going through the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court to get warrants, he could face impeachment.
Tracey Schmitt, a spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee, dismissed Mr Gore's speech as headline-hunting.