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Bush Claims Mail Can Be Opened Without Warrant
don_combatant writes to note that President Bush claimed new powers to search US mail without a warrant. He made this claim in a "signing statement" at the time he signed a postal overhaul bill into law on December 20. The signing statement directly contradicts part of the bill he signed, which explicitly reinforces protections of first-class mail from searches without a court's approval. According to the article, "A top Senate Intelligence Committee aide promised a review of Bush's move."
AFAIK, the last I checked the legality or effectiveness of signing statements (of which Bush has made hundreds of by now, pretty much attaching one to nearly every bill he has signed since he has been in office) was extremely dubious at best. The second something that tries to play off one of these signing statements goes to court, does anybody really, honestly believe that they would hold any legal water? The bill is the bill, and regardless of what little post-it note that the president attaches to it when he signs it doesn't change that fact.
Honestly, I'm not too worried about it at this point, but I'm sure others will follow up if I am completely off base, as IANAL.
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In theory, you are quite right, since the president has not been in charge of interpreting the laws for a long time. In practice, however, very few acts of the "FedGov" are ever challenged in court – a large portion of your constitutional protections arise from what the government decides not to do, rather than from you retroactively getting a court order enforcing your rights. In particular, if the government decides to ignore a particular right, they can effectively nullify it.
Actually, to the extent that Mr. Bush is saying "if we believe there's a ticking bomb in a letter we will send the bomb squad in first and resolve the legal issues later", there is no controversey. Unfortunately, he also seems to be saying "if we believe the sender and reciever are contemplating un-american behaviour during a time of national emergency, we will read their mail first and put them on the no-fly list later".
Actually, he's saying "I want to be dictator of the USA"
"If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator."
George w Bush, Washington, D.C., Dec. 19, 2000
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
Honestly, don't come to Canada if you believe that it is a more democratic or free country than the US
Essentially, whenever Canada has a majority (which is impossible without strong support from the eastern provinces) it is a benign dictatorship; being that everyone in the West doesn't count (lower representation in the Senate, Lower representation in the House of Commons) we are constantly abused in favour of eastern interests.
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Well, yes, because if you have reason to believe there's a bomb in a letter that might blow up if you take the time to go to court that's Probable Cause for doing a search, and a search warrant can be retroactively granted by a judge based on their initial evidence. This is all fine and rational and even Constitutional.
Actually, the legal idea that permits investigating a possble bomb in the mail is Exigent Circumstance not simply probable cause. In the case of Exigent Circumstances they *may* make a warrantless search, but the thing is that there has to be strong evidence that an emergency situation exists, where waiting to get a warrant will result in either destruction of evidence, escape of the suspect, or the key part: to prevent imminent danger to life or serious damage to property.
If they had probable cause to search the mail, then they should get a warrant to open it. The only time where a warrant isn't necessary is for the reasons given above.
Of course, we used to have a right to privacy of your person, which covered things like a diary. According to what I heard, this right was never written down, because the consitituonal framers considered it to be such an undeniable right, that it's not necessary to write it down. (After all, you're not required to testify against yourself, why should the government be able to use your diary against you then?) Although, no such right exists anymore, and your diary may be used against you, because it was never written down.
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You actually hit a nail on the head.
Full disclosure: I'm pretty much somewhere to the left of most people. Im not a socialist, but I'm a greeny humanitarian athiest non-nationalist who really does think people are more important than profits (but conceeds its rarely as simple as that).
I've noticed something quite interesting watching across the pacific at the political debates in the US, and one thing is that whats often being called a "conservative" often doesnt seem to be that well conservative. Its pretty much the same here.
I'm going to do something really fucking wierd for me and argue for traditional conservatism for a bit.
I've always taken conservatism to be a grand old tradition starting with Edmund Burke basically stating in a round about way that tradition trumps human reason. Now whilst that can be accused of anti-intellectualism (and its a correct accusation on some level) its good to look at the context historically.
a-priori reason up till at least the modern times lead to two major strands of politico-economic thought. The workerist communism of Karl marx, and the free market liberalism of Adam Smith. Both brilliantly argued, but both historical failures (some would argue free market liberalism, the dominant ideology of the west has infact redeemed in the past 100 or less years. maybe) itself in its ability to deliver positive outcomes for people.. Consequently conservatism argues for small business, authoritarian but not necesarily too economically intrusive government, against welfare , for monarchy (although Burke was fond of the liberal republicanism of the US revolution despite its origins in the french revolution he despised, but for diferent reasons, principally that he saw them as patriotic and without much of a tradition anyway to squash) and conservatism was largely protectionist. He didnt like the idea of a free market that would squash village and farm economys. Although Karl marx's mob wasnt around yet at the time of Burke, he would of passionately hated it, for its complete untraditionalism and anti-monarchism. Burke also strongly suggested traditional social mores always trumped 'experimental' philisophical social moralitys. If your social system came from a philosopher rather than a pulpit or king, chances are Burke hated it.
Now you can see some of that in the republican rhetoric, but not all of it, and the US is somewhat of a special case, in that the founding fathers republicanism was also profoundly classically liberal. The support base of the republicans tends to come from agricultural communitys, its supporters, and southern 'patriotic' sorts of sentimentalism. Basically a conservative electorate.
But heres the rub. Whilst the republicans (despite the rhetoric about small govt, a liberal idea) do tend to do local policy in a vaguely conservative manner, the foreign policy is deeply non conservative.
Burke always valued tradition. And that means that stomping traditional muslim countries and replacing govts with liberal democracys is a bad thing for conservatives, because conservatism understands that the local tradition is what 'evolved' under the 'best of all possible worlds' within that community. Many traditional conservatives have noted this, and pointed out that neo-conservatism (as many of these neuvo conservatives have dubbed themselves. When said 'conservatives espouse free market ideas, they will tend to be refered in academia as 'neo liberals') appears to have verry little respect for local tradition and thus isnt conservatism)
So yeah. What Im arguing is that at least on foreign policy , and on some level foreign trade, the conservatives of the US establishment appear to be anything but, and paradoxically the liberals appear to be more conservative.
Its an odd conundrum.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.