Think for a moment: the CIA got caught spying on Congress

[BainsBane]

89. Since WWII?

Why the limit? Most of the most contentious crises were in the nineteenth century, the Bank and Nullification being commonly cited. Ultimately the Secession of Southern States would prove to be the ultimate Constitutional Crisis, leading to Civil War.

Constitutional Crisis is a term greatly overused. Conflicts between branches of governments emerge that are not crises. While I would think it clear that the CIA's spying of the senate violated the constitution, a violation is not the same as a crisis. For it to be a crisis, the Executive and Congressional branches would both have to assert their actions were justified and that they each in turn had authority over the issue. The CIA and the White House are not claiming that to be the case. They admit it was a violation. Therefore no constitutional crisis is triggered. https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&frm=1&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CB0QFjAA&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.law.upenn.edu%2Flive%2Ffiles%2F104-levinsonbalkin157upalrev7072009pdf&ei=yn7cU9zKMoydyAT374KgAg&usg=AFQjCNECWsJN5yPSZcbzU8-8FViORj2riQ&sig2=zfq9x53DDQST5jv6vHQqBA

The author of the article above cites Little Rock in 1957 as an example of a type of constitutional crisis where different branches of government each assert authority and refuse to acknowledge the authority of the other.

I can tell you of constitutional violations I consider more concerning than spying on congress: NSA surveillance and effective nullification of the Fourth Amendment. I do not consider spying of congress more serious than of ordinary Americans. I am relieved to know that you discovered congress exists, however. You have spent at least a year focusing entirely on the Presidency and it's potential occupants.

I would also say suspension of Habeas Corpus during the war on terror is of greater concern.

In terms of the CIA particularly, involvement in the assassination of Americans on US soil in furtherance of a brutal right-wing dictatorship strikes me as more serious. http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB199/ As well as Americans and Chileans killed in the aftermath of the US sponsored coup that overturned the oldest democracy in Latin America. http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&frm=1&source=newssearch&cd=1&ved=0CBsQqQIoADAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fpeoplesworld.org%2Fjudicial-finding-in-chile-says-u-s-complicit-in-death-of-young-americans%2F&ei=1XPcU-HTMpOHyATVvoGQBw&usg=AFQjCNHAJIes8opvby8KPstz1HGrc1ZY9A&sig2=iD3l6HWU3ehcfP8B2OVyWw

The Iran Contra affair violated congressional authority since the White House and CIA broke the the Boland Amendment that made it illegal to arm the contra rebels seeking to overturn the Sandinista government in Nicaragua.

The US sponsored coup against Arbenz in 1954 was atrocious. US action was influenced by the fact that both the Director of the CIA and Secretary of State were major stock holders in United Fruit, a US company whose holdings were threatened by land reform proposed by the Arbenz government (only lands not currently cultivated). That coup led to the installation of a series of military dictatorships that would, with military aid and instruction by the US military (in the School of the Americas) and CIA, the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Guatemalans, mostly indigenous, over the subsequent four decades. That included torture of Guatemalans and Americans, like Sister Diana Ortiz, who wrote about her torture at the hands of an American. http://www.amazon.com/The-Blindfolds-Eyes-Journey-Torture/dp/1570755639

Other horrors by the CIA included the overthrow in 1953, of the Mosaddegh administration in Iran. That would set the conditions that would lead to the Iranian revolution of 1979, whose consequences we continue to face, including through the arming of Hamas and the conflict going on this very moment.

Really, Brenner has nothing on Allen Dulles, head of CIA during both of the above coups as well as the Bay of Pigs.

So it's one thing to say the spying on congress is bad and to give reasons why, but your ahistorical hyperbole irritates me. It seems the point as ever is to pretend Obama is the worst President in history. I have long grown weary of it.