Phrases like “constitutional crisis” and “unchecked presidential power” may sound like hyperbolic Democratic criticism of President Bush and his wiretapping programs. But these strong words are coming from powerful Republicans concerned that the White House is overreaching in its assertions that the president can interpret laws as he sees fit.

They rightly also have harsh words for Congress which has largely acquiesced as the president sidestepped laws and purposely kept lawmakers out of the loop on important decisions, such as whether to monitor domestic phone calls. Congress is belatedly and tentatively reasserting its authority. It must do so more forcefully and more often.

“If you interpret the Constitution’s saying that the president is commander in chief to mean that the president can do anything he wants and can ignore the laws you don’t have a constitution: you have a king.” This assessment is from Grover Norquist, a leader of the conservative movement who often backs Bush policies. In an article in the current New York Review of Books, he went on to say: “They’re not trying to change the law; they’re saying they’re above the law and in the case of the NSA wiretaps they break it.”

Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel observed in the same article: “There’s a very clear pattern of aggressively asserting executive power, and the Congress has essentially been complicit in letting him do it.”

Several recent revelations have shown the extent of the White House power grab. Last month, USA Today reported the National Security Agency has collected records from tens of millions of Americans, far too many to all be suspected terrorists.

In April, The Boston Globe reported that President Bush had quietly claimed the authority to disobey more than 750 laws enacted by Congress since he took office. The president has never vetoed a bill, instead using signing statements, which are published in the Federal Register but rarely read, to reinterpret laws that have already been negotiated in Congress.

Last November, the Senate, by a vote of 90 to 9, passed an amendment by Sen. John McCain banning cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of detainees in U.S. custody. President Bush threatened to veto a defense spending bill containing such a prohibition on torture. Instead, the president signed the bill but he accompanied it with a statement that said “the executive branch shall construe [the provision] in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the President to supervise the unitary executive branch and as Commander in Chief …”

This prompted several prominent conservatives, including William Sessions, FBI director under President George H.W. Bush, and Bruce Fein, a Reagan administration Justice Department official and conservative legal activist, to warn that the country faced “a constitutional crisis.”

Frustration with the Bush administration’s consolidation of power and secrecy boiled over at a Judiciary Committee hearing recently when a Justice Department official frequently said “I can’t answer that,” when asked about the department’s investigation of journalists reporting classified informa-tion. Republican Sen. Charles Grassley observed that if the Justice Department respected the committee it would send someone to testify who would actually answer the committee’s questions. Democrat Patrick Leahy jumped in saying that precisely was the problem: the administration has an “arrogance … against any type of oversight.”

The challenge now is for the senators to turn their anger into action by fulfilling their appropriate role in overseeing executive agencies, whether the administration wants them to or not.