The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, an essential part of the Bill of Rights, guards against unreasonable searches and seizures.
It was drafted by our Founding Fathers because of a justified revulsion and hatred against "writs of assistance" that allowed British soldiers in colonial America to search anyone and anywhere they chose. It is no exaggeration to say that these widespread, indiscriminate searches were one of the central causes of the successful American Revolution.
IV. 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, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
The Amendment specifies that judicially sanctioned search and arrest warrants must be supported by probable cause and be limited in scope according to specific information supplied by a person (usually a police officer) who has sworn by it and is therefore accountable to the issuing court. The Amendment clearly commands that only a judge or magistrate can authorize a valid search warrant.
Fear Itself
Clearly the President of the United States has no power to waive the Fourth Amendment or any other part of the U.S. Constitution.
But given that historic and legal background -- consider the past six years since the terrorists attacks of 9-11, 2001, of fostering mass fear of terrorism among Americans, the threat of attacks skillfully used by politicians to promote themselves.
Thus it was that today, as reported by The New York Times, "After months of wrangling, Democratic and Republican leaders in Congress struck a deal to overhaul the rules on the government's wiretapping powers and provide what amounts to legal immunity to the phone companies that took part in President Bush's program of eavesdropping without warrants after the Sept. 11 attacks."
The House passed the bill today. Most significantly, the legislation makes legal the president's previously illegal National Security Agency (NSA) surveillance program. In other words, a majority of the House, sworn to uphold the Constitution, voted in effect to repeal the Fourth Amendment.
I share the view expressed by Timothy B. Lee, Cato Institute adjunct scholar, who writes: "Under our system of government, searches are conducted pursuant to warrants or other court orders. This is an important check on the executive branch's surveillance powers because it ensures an independent magistrate will review any surveillance activity and block those that aren't conducted pursuant to the law. To treat a 'written directive from the government' as a substitute for a court order is to abandon this fundamental principle."
Get the Terrorists
As readers know, we often comment on what we, and others, perceive to be unconstitutional violations of our civil liberties.
We believe, as does U.S. Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI), a president has no power to disregard laws that he doesn't like or finds inconvenient. If he does, then the rule of law has ended in America. If the Nixon Watergate scandal established nothing else, it affirmed that a president too is subject to the law, just as are all Americans.
Most of our complaints arise from laws and policies instituted since the terrorist attacks of 9-11. So we'll say it again; we support every reasonable anti-terrorist action consistent with the Constitution.
But we emphatically disagree that Americans should be forced to surrender their rights in the name of a false "security" that destroys the very rights it claims to protect.
The President has openly admitted that he personally and repeatedly secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on telephone calls and read e-mails of people within the United States -- without obtaining judicial warrants as specifically required by law.
That law, known as FISA, grew out of the scandalous abuse by the FBI of Americans' civil liberties in the 1970s, curtailing domestic spying on Americans by U.S. intelligence agencies. It provided a system under which federal police agencies can covertly obtain from judges legal warrants to eavesdrop on suspected spies and terrorists.
This is the law that Bush secretly brushed aside -- and the same law now gutted by a nervous bipartisan coalition in Congress more concerned about saving their political hides than about the Constitution.
Wake Up America
Of course, we at the Sovereign Society are primarily concerned with the unjustified intrusions by the government into offshore financial matters and the destruction of personal and financial privacy.
As a life long conservative, (albeit with a decided libertarian bent), it gives me no comfort to find myself in league with those on the Left on these important issues of civil rights. But the swift pace of the destruction of rights continues unabated in America and we all should be concerned.
Unfortunately, a large percentage of Americans seem unconcerned as their freedoms diminish. A feeble public awareness needs to be converted into a true understanding of what's really happening -- and action to stop it.
Wake up America.
P.S. I've been keeping an eye on Bush's questionable laws for the past seven years - starting with the almighty PATRIOT Act back in 2001. Seven years later, it's still the scariest law I've ever seen. Click here for the full story on this destructive law.
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