Bush says feds can open mail without warrants

usatoday

President Bush has "quietly claimed sweeping new powers to open Americans' mail without a judge's warrant," the New York Daily News writes this morning.

When he put his signature on a postal reform bill on Dec. 20, the newspaper notes, the president added a "signing statement" that "declared his right to open people's mail under emergency conditions."

The key phrase in that statement:

"The executive branch shall construe subsection 404(c) of title 39, as enacted by subsection 1010(e) of the Act, which provides for opening of an item of a class of mail otherwise sealed against inspection, in a manner consistent, to the maximum extent permissible, with the need to conduct searches in exigent circumstances, such as to protect human life and safety against hazardous materials, and the need for physical searches specifically authorized by law for foreign intelligence collection."

According to the Daily News, legal experts say the president's claim is "contrary to existing law and contradicted the bill he had just signed."

White House spokeswoman Emily Lawrimore, though, told the Daily News that "in certain circumstances -- such as with the proverbial 'ticking bomb' -- the Constitution does not require warrants for reasonable searches."

Word of Bush's action follows revelations last year about the National Security Agency's so-called warrantless eavesdropping on telephone and Internet communications.

While the president's signing statement went mostly unnoticed at first, a few bloggers and websites did make note of it just before New Year's:

• Care2 News Network -- according to an IceRocket search -- may have been first, on Dec. 28.

• My Cigar Experience called the statement "particularly alarming" on Dec. 29.

• Justin Gardner at Donklephant said Dec. 30 that "Bush has created hundreds of de facto "laws" that nobody has to approve and few even know about. This ... just seems flat out wrong."