The Post says "misled" -- We call it lying. Either way, Feingold is challenging Gonzales for what he told Congress last year during his confirmation hearings:
Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) charged yesterday that Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales misled the Senate during his confirmation hearing a year ago when he appeared to try to avoid answering a question about whether the president could authorize warrantless wiretapping of U.S. citizens.
In a letter to the attorney general yesterday, Feingold demanded to know why Gonzales dismissed the senator's question about warrantless eavesdropping as a "hypothetical situation" during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in January 2005. At the hearing, Feingold asked Gonzales where the president's authority ends and whether Gonzales believed the president could, for example, act in contravention of existing criminal laws and spy on U.S. citizens without a warrant.
Gonzales said that it was impossible to answer such a hypothetical question but that it was "not the policy or the agenda of this president" to authorize actions that conflict with existing law. He added that he would hope to alert Congress if the president ever chose to authorize warrantless surveillance, according to a transcript of the hearing.
Given what we know now, that was just not true and Feingold wants to know why. Remember, at the time of his testimony in January of 2005, the White House knew that the NY Times had the domestic spying story. It could become public. Yet, that didn't cause Gonzales any pause:
"It now appears that the Attorney General was not being straight with the Judiciary Committee and he has some explaining to do," Feingold said in a statement yesterday.
Not being straight means Gonzales lied...to Congress...under oath. Lying is standard operating procedure for the Bush Administation. They lie to the media all the time, but those patsies just keep regurgitating whatever the White House throws them. But, lying to Congress should have consequences. There was a time when that mattered. The Bush White House has emasculated Congress in the same way they did it to the press. Pathetic.
