Is Prezident Bush Reading Your Mail?

Last December 20, the prezident signed a new postal law. The USPS was happy as it "will benefit both residential and business customers by ensuring predictable price increases tied to the rate of inflation." This and other changes will put the USPS "on firm financial footing for the future," said Postmaster General John E. Potter.

Shortly after a bi-partisan group of Washington poobahs watched him sign this new law, the prezident sneakily issued another "signing statement" that said he had the right to open people's mail under emergency conditions without a warrant or judicial authority.

Whoa! That's illegal! Or as someone else noted, what Bush signed "is contrary to existing law and contradicted the bill" to which he had just affixed his name!

Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), said in spite of Bush's claim of legality, which allows him to ignore a basic privacy protection, the "new postal law continues to prohibit the government from snooping into people's mail without a warrant."

The problem is that Bush doesn't bother with those legal niceties. And Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies in Washington, says Bush's claim that he has the right to open people's mail without a warrant is "new and quite alarming."

Another, unnamed senior U.S. official warned that "You have to be concerned. It takes Executive Branch authority beyond anything we've ever known."

Bush, as usual, says there are certain "exigent circumstances" where he has the right to open mail without a warrant, such as "an imminent danger or a longstanding state of emergency."

As Jesse Wendel of Group News Blog says satirically: "I feel safer already."

Then Jesse asks, rhetorically: "Reading our mail? Letters from soldiers to their boyfriends and girlfriends. Strategy memos from Fortune 500 Companies to strategic partners including how they'll bid on government jobs. Whistle-blower memos. Letters to criminal defense lawyers, priests and rabbis."

The stage is set for our new, reformed, biblical, compassionate dictatorship: All we need now is an "exigent circumstance." Like setting fire to the Reichstag, maybe?