Conservatism and the Bush bunch.(Bob Ban against the use of warrantless wiretaps in criminal investigation)

Bob Ban', a former Republican congressman from Georgia who served as one of the House impeachment managers during Bill Clinton's impeachment trial in the Senate, has become an outspoken critic of the Bush administration's "Homeland Security" agenda. He has been particularly vehement in condemning the administration's use of warrantless wiretaps, a policy he describes as an assault on the rights protected by the Fourth Amendment.

At the recent Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington, Barr--once a darling of the Beltway "right"--was treated as an apostate and heretic. Barr was on hand to debate former Bush administration legal adviser Viet Dinh, who helped compose the so-called Patriot Act.

"Do we truly remain a society that believes that ... every president must abide by the law of this country?" asked Barr during his opening statement. "I, as a conservative, say yes. I hope you as conservatives say yes." This exhortation, reports the Washington Post, was greeted by "deathly" silence by the audience, which was much more receptive to Dinh's effort to "carve out a Bush exception to their ideological principle of limited government."

"The conservative movement has a healthy skepticism of governmental power, but at times, unfortunately, that healthy skepticism needs to yield," ...