because once criminal immunity is passed, any future prosecution would necessarily be based upon an impermissible ex-post facto law. But retrospective immunity itself is an ex-post-facto law, so how can it possibly be legal? Can any lawyers here explain this? It is legal for one clear reason -- when you have the power to abuse your office (either because you buy your way or because you have stacked the courts in your favor, or both) you can. In the days of Reagan (oh, how we yearn for the goold old days!) they used to call it might makes right; now it's a little less elegant -- we do whatever we want and ignore any laws, subpoenas or anything that gets in our way. Sad thing is that we al are paying for this (and will be for a long time). But is retrospective immunity actually constitutional, according to any reasonable reading of the constition? Suppose the crime in question was murder, not illegal wiretapping? If Congress passed a law that all murders from 9/11/01 to 1/7/07 would not be criminal violations, would that be constitutional? -- But is retrospective immunity actually constitutional, according to any reasonable reading of the constition? --  There are reasonable arguments on both sides of that question, for the alleged violations of the 4th amendment. I go back to the violations uncovered by the Church Commission, what was the judicial remedy? NO. It is not, but that will not stop the Bush Administration. When you get