President Bush has quietly claimed sweeping new powers to open Americans’ mail without a judge’s warrant, the Daily News has learned.<\/p>\nThe President asserted his new authority when he signed a postal reform bill into law on Dec. 20. Bush then issued a "signing statement" that declared his right to open people’s mail under emergency conditions.<\/p>\n
That claim is contrary to existing law and contradicted the bill he had just signed, say experts who have reviewed it.<\/p>\n
Bush’s move came during the winter congressional recess and a year after his secret domestic electronic eavesdropping program was first revealed. It caught Capitol Hill by surprise.<\/p>\n
"Despite the President’s statement that he may be able to circumvent a basic privacy protection, the new postal law continues to prohibit the government from snooping into people’s mail without a warrant," said Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), the incoming House Government Reform Committee chairman, who co-sponsored the bill.<\/p>\n
Experts said the new powers could be easily abused and used to vacuum up large amounts of mail.<\/p>\n
"The [Bush] signing statement claims authority to open domestic mail without a warrant, and that would be new and quite alarming," said Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies in Washington.<\/p>\n
"The danger is they’re reading Americans’ mail," she said.<\/p>\n
"You have to be concerned," agreed a career senior U.S. official who reviewed the legal underpinnings of Bush’s claim. "It takes Executive Branch authority beyond anything we’ve ever known."<\/p>\n
A top Senate Intelligence Committee aide promised, "It’s something we’re going to look into."<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
<\/p>\nWell, so what? You can’t impeach him unless the republicans go along with it and swear to God if Bush was caught with a pistol in his hands robbing a bank, they’d tell you that the president has the right to rob banks in the name of national security because 9-11 changed everything.<\/p>\n
Good thing it’s not a democrat doing this or the news media would be having kittens right now.\n<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It just never stops with him does it… W pushes envelope on U.S. spying President Bush has quietly claimed sweeping new powers to open Americans’ mail without a judge’s warrant, the Daily News has learned. The President asserted his new authority when he signed a postal reform bill into law on Dec. 20. Bush then […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[15,6],"class_list":["post-508","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-tales-of-the-smirk","tag-the-right-wing-mindset"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/508","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=508"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/508\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}