Important, Please Read.

The following is copied from a post by Orin Kerr at http://volokh.com. This is significant information which everyone must at least make themselves aware of.

Of judicial appointments Bush has said, "Federal judges have the duty to interpret the Constitution and the laws faithfully and fairly, to protect the constitutional rights of all Americans, and to do these things with care and with restraint."

Apparently, Bush does not think the executive should exercise such restraint or interpret the Constitution fairly and faithfully.

As you read this consider the Fourth Amendment: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause . . . "

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Domestic Surveillance By the NSA?: James Risen and Eric Lichtblau break a tremendously important story in tomorrow's New York Times about a secret program that has permitted the NSA to spy without a warrant inside the United States. The story begins:

"Months after the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying, according to government officials."

Under a presidential order signed in 2002, the intelligence agency has monitored the international telephone calls and international e-mail messages of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people inside the United States without warrants over the past three years in an effort to track possible "dirty numbers" linked to Al Qaeda, the officials said. The agency, they said, still seeks warrants to monitor entirely domestic communications."

The previously undisclosed decision to permit some eavesdropping inside the country without court approval was a major shift in American intelligence-gathering practices, particularly for the National Security Agency, whose mission is to spy on communications abroad. As a result, some officials familiar with the continuing operation have questioned whether the surveillance has stretched, if not crossed, constitutional limits on legal searches."

How much monitoring is occurring?

"Here's what the article says: While many details about the program remain secret, officials familiar with it say the N.S.A. eavesdrops without warrants on up to 500 people in the United States at any given time."

Is this legal, you're wondering? The article offers this:

"Mr. Bush's executive order allowing some warrantless eavesdropping on those inside the United States - including American citizens, permanent legal residents, tourists and other foreigners - is based on classified legal opinions that assert that the president has broad powers to order such searches, derived in part from the September 2001 Congressional resolution authorizing him to wage war on Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups, according to the officials familiar with the N.S.A. operation.

"The legal opinions that support the N.S.A. operation remain classified, but they appear to have followed private discussions among senior administration lawyers and other officials about the need to pursue aggressive strategies that once may have been seen as crossing a legal line, according to senior officials who participated in the discussions."

According to the story, some officials objected, and DOJ audited the program:

"Some agency officials wanted nothing to do with the program, apparently fearful of participating in an illegal operation, a former senior Bush administration official said. before the 2004 election, the official said, some N.S.A. personnel worried that the program might come under scrutiny by Congressional or criminal investigators if Senator John Kerry, the Democratic nominee, was elected president."

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This is significant information for anyone who worried that our freedoms were being eroded at home while Americans are dying abroad under that very banner.

Further, I'd like to make a specific point as to the comment: "the need to pursue aggressive strategies that once may have been seen as crossing a legal line." Regarding the Constitution, conservatives famously argue that the Constitution is NOT a "living document" that evolves with the times but that it should be applied as the framers would have intended at the time of drafting. Therefore, under that philosophy, there can be no policy that was unconstitutional a few years ago but suddenly now fits well within the Constitution's boundaries.

In fact, it is not that such practices are now constitutional, the truth of the matter is that now, the Administration merely disregards the boundaries the Constitution places on their exercise of power.