Washington ? In his first appearance before Congress since the Watergate hearings of the 1970s, former White House Counsel John Dean drew a parallel between President Bush and the man Dean once worked for, Richard M. Nixon, saying, “We have entered a period where a president is pushing the envelope (and) is actually defying the Congress.”

Dean’s testimony Friday conjured up old political ghosts and added a theatrical edge to a long and unusual hearing on Sen. Russ Feingold’s resolution to censure the president.

Feingold invited Dean to testify, a choice meant to underscore the lawmaker’s claim that Bush has violated the law by wiretapping Americans without a warrant.

Now 67 and writing books in his retirement, Dean told the Senate Judiciary Committee that it would have been a “godsend” had Congress more than 30 years ago censured “some of Nixon’s conduct long before it erupted to the degree and the problem that it became.”

Feingold said Friday that Bush’s assertions of executive power posed a “greater threat to our republic” than Nixon’s abuses, terming it “one of the greatest attempts to dismantle our system of government that we have seen in the history of our country.”

Such invocations of Watergate drew angry objections from Republicans on the committee.

Texas Sen. John Cornyn protested that the panel was giving a forum to a “convicted felon” (Dean served four months in prison for his role in the Watergate scandal).

South Carolina Republican Lindsey Graham called the Nixon comparisons “apples and oranges,” and he ended up debating Dean over the meaning of the Watergate burglary and cover-up.

Calling Watergate a case of “burglarizing somebody’s office,” Graham said today’s controversy over domestic surveillance involves an “honest, sincere debate” about “where (presidential) authority begins and ends.”

Former Nixon White House Counsel John Dean testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill Friday, March 31, 2006, on the censure of President Bush. Dean asserted Friday that Bush's conduct in connection with domestic spying exceeds the wrongdoing that toppled his former boss from power.

Feingold’s resolution has attracted little support from Senate Democrats, and disdain and outrage from Republicans.

But it has also drawn more attention to the legal debate over the government’s surveillance program, which was secretly launched after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Critics note the program is in conflict with a 1978 law requiring court approval for wiretaps on Americans. The administration and its defenders say the president’s inherent constitutional powers in time of war take precedence.

While Senate Judiciary Chairman Arlen Specter is dismissive of censure, it was his decision to hold Friday’s hearing on Feingold’s resolution, saying he wanted to use it as another forum to discuss the broad legal questions surrounding the wiretapping, questions he said deserve more public attention.

But it was clear Friday that some of Specter’s fellow Republicans weren’t happy that Feingold’s resolution was getting such a platform, a full-blown Senate hearing with five witnesses and some 30 reporters present.

“This hearing, I think, is beyond the pale,” said Alabama Republican Jeff Sessions, who complained that “the national spasm over the (National Security Agency) wiretaps has had its run, and I would have thought it would be at rest by now.”

Such comments suggested that Feingold’s resolution has proved a bit of thorn to both parties. Senate Democrats have legal doubts about the wiretapping, but most have shrunk from censure, terming it premature, unwise or over-the-top.

Republicans are almost unanimous in belittling censure, but they are divided over whether the surveillance program is open to legal question.

Two of the five Republicans on the committee who appeared at the hearing, Specter and Graham, have expressed sharp doubts about the administration’s legal rationale.

And while Sessions and Cornyn questioned the wisdom of Friday’s hearing, Graham thanked Specter for holding it.

On the Democratic side, Vermont’s Pat Leahy and Feingold’s fellow Wisconsinite Herb Kohl attended parts of the hearing, though Kohl left before asking questions.

Kohl has not voiced support for Feingold’s resolution but issued a statement Friday saying “the issue deserves a hearing.” He said it would be “inappropriate for me to make premature judgments, but I will evaluate carefully as . . . the investigation into the administration’s actions moves forward.”

Leahy came close to endorsing the censure resolution, which has only two Democratic co-sponsors. The Vermont Democrat said, “I have no hesitation in condemning the president for secretly and systematically violating the laws of the United States,” and added, “I am inclined to believe” censure is an appropriate sanction.

The Republican Sessions called censure “irresponsible,” and said, “It’s time for some in this Congress to get over it.”

Specter said he wouldn’t go so far as to call it “frivolous,” but said “I do think that there is no merit” to it, because, he said, the president has acted in good faith and the legality of the program remains an open question.

Feingold was allowed two witnesses and selected men who had both worked under GOP presidents. One was Dean, who wrote a 2004 book called “Worse Than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush.” The other was Bruce Fein, a conservative legal scholar and former Reagan administration official who told the panel that Bush’s claim of inherent constitutional authority “has no stopping point.”

Specter invited three witnesses, including one who was an associate attorney general under Democrat Bill Clinton. That witness, John Schmidt, argued for the program’s legality and said that, even if he is wrong, “it’s still an argument that serious legal scholars, serious lawyers can make.”

Said Schmidt, “To suggest that the president should be censured because you don’t agree with the legal advice he got seems to me to just – to be out of the ballpark in terms of the way we can sensibly discuss and talk about issues like this.”

Dean’s previous testimony to Congress was delivered amid high drama, when he recounted the Watergate cover-up to a Senate investigating committee in 1973 and the House Judiciary Committee considering impeachment in 1974.

Dean told senators Friday that they should assert congressional authority because presidents “take note of that when they’re not being called to the mat. They push the envelope as far as they can.”