All presidents have had the power to intercept domestic mail with a warrant. They also have had the power and it already is in the law for true exigent circumstances. But Bush is claiming the same right without a warrent. This is a big change.

Of course this coming from a person who claims the right to put people in jail for expressing their opinions publicly when those opinions are according to him a threat to the nation.

The right to search anyone and anywhere he decides is a threat without any warrant.

The right to decided who is worth of a jury trial and who is such a threat that they should be held without trial of any kind.

The right to decide what evidence the defense may produce in a trial that he might allow. He also reserves the right to prosecute people for the crime of defending someone who is a threat.

Now why would worry about such a person being in power.

SkyRake, your idea that the federal agencies is run by retired Secret Service agents is patently false. Do you just dream up these facts, or is that the message you receive through your conspiracy theorist’s BBS?

Being carbon neutral is a pretty good idea, which also will probably not work in a lot of cases. So the first part is a who cares, that is their job. I would be worried if they were not urging this. Wished someone would come up with a way to do this.

As for the second. Don’t know the context, but I can’t see what what saying that this was a good idea is a bad idea or wrong. The guy sure did a lot of wrong things, and well deserved his “final big step”. But if he, while he was in power, said that he or his nation was going to become carbon neutral I would think that saying that he was doing a good thing and was right IN THIS DECISION was not a bad statement. ONE has to wonder what your problem with it is.

As for the debatability of his trashing of the constitution is certainly questionable. I think the really only question is if he is right in doing it. I think that our constitution is more important than a man or a time period. Our constitution is also what has won us our past wars we have won. So the best way to fight a war is to defend and support it, and not to trash it.

One additional thought. You supporting Bushes right to read all your mail if he decides that there is a need. Do you support the right of President Hillary (Which is, unfortunately, a real possibility) having this same right?

I don’t think you’d complain too much when the headlines go the other way, for instance, “Environmentalists want you dead.” Sadly, I threw out that headline. But “Democrats to put poor out of work” is one I expect to come up very soon. It’s alarmist!

I remain no less concerned that it could be misused, especially if Hillary becomes President in 2008.

Ha! Good point, but still, since this is nothing new why resort to the alarmist headlines?

And Ray, your assertion that the President and his staff is quite willing to ignore the constitution is debatable. That debate is waged all the time nowadays, but the President has a staff of constitutional lawyers on hand to make sure he stays within the boundaries of the law. Maybe one of the reasons GW uses so many signing statements is to cover his ass on these questions.

Frankly it would have been excluded if I had ruled on the issue. Lets look at it.

The police find two murder victims and two children who are a live and well. The children are the children of the female victim. The father lives elsewhere. So two officers go to notify the father so that he can take custody of the children. Now they get to the residence and notice blood at the location. (I take the police’s word on this) Now they definitely have exigent circumstances. It is possible that someone is injured or dying inside. They have every right and duty to enter and look for such a person. (The alive and maybe needing immediate help makes for exigent, if you know everyone is dead then there is no exigent) But they have to be looking for the person. They can only look in locations a person might be. The find a person and he says that he heard a noise which might be a person falling int he back of the building. So they have obvious exigency for the back of the building. BUT TO LOOK FOR A PERSON.

Here is why I would have excluded the glove. They looked down the area behind the building and find that there was no person alive or otherwise in the area. No more exigency in that area. But they proceeded to search the area and after proceeding into an area and started a search. Then they turned over leaves (when was the last time you knew of someone who could be hidden under a leaf ;-) ) They then found the glove and took it in as evidence. They were claiming an exigent circumstances search in an area they new that there was not exigency, and then looked in locations that could not contain the exigency.

If I trusted that indeed there would be actual exigency such as a possible bomb then OK. The cases that I know of with regards to Clinton did not include warrantless searches, which is what we are talking about here, so Clinton appears to have done none of them.

I know that many of the authorities would like “I would like to search but don’t have the evidence for a warrant” to be exigent, but it is not. We have a president and his staff who are quite willing to ignore the constitution, so we have every reason to suspect this signing statement.

“This is not a change in the law. This is not new,” said White House press secretary Tony Snow. “It is, in fact, merely a statement of present law and present authorities granted to the President of the United States.”

Snow said that Bush’s signing statement was “trying to make absolutely clear what present law permits.”

I remain no less concerned that it could be misused, especially if Hillary becomes President in 2008.

You seem to think this is a new ability of the President- the point is its not.

The issue here is not “enemy communications.” It’s “exigent circumstances.” We’ve had some sort of exigent circumstance or another throughout my lifetime, and throughout my parents’ lifetimes, and throughout my grandparents’ lifetimes.

You seem to think this sort of thing has never happened to Americans exercising their rights before and could never happen again. But it has happened before, and without eternal vigilance, it will happen again.