Get the government out of our mail!

I can't believe how far the George Bush administration has gone to suppress privacy laws and constitutional rights in the name of hunting down "terrorists". The situation is starting to resemble something out of a George Orwell story, yet so few people seem to really care about the general erosion of freedom from government interference - ironically, a central tenet of conservatism.

In yet another power grab that whittles away our rights without a plausible justification, President Bush has given the government expanded authority to read our mail.

This White House has long signaled that it will do what it wants in the name of national security, laws be damned. It has reserved the government’s right to detain and even torture suspects without due process, and has asserted for itself wide latitude to electronically eavesdrop on Americans without obtaining search warrants.

So perhaps it should surprise no one that Bush would add a “signing statement” to a postal-reform bill passed by Congress that suggests the new law allows the opening of mail that would be “otherwise sealed against inspection” for broadly defined security purposes.

Once again, the White House attempted to downplay the significance of a signing statement, insisting the president was not trying to exert any new authority. Instead, the Bush spinners said the purpose of the signing statement was to reiterate current law, which clearly does allow postal authorities to open a package suspected of containing a ticking time bomb — the example of choice for those trying to pooh-pooh the concerns. Also, before the administration tries to trot out a red herring about wanting to intercept “letters from al Qaeda” without delay, it has every opportunity to do so under current law — and could then apply for a warrant after the fact.

Bush has added hundreds of similarly substantive “signing statements” to legislation he has approved during his presidency. Some of his statements have unilaterally weakened, or in some cases even overturned, the intent of a bill passed by Congress. His signing statements have tempered congressional attempts to outlaw torture, limit political meddling in scientific research, protect whistle-blowers and recruit women and minorities into the intelligence services.

Before Bush took office, presidential signing statements were relatively rare and mostly limited to expressions of how an administration planned to carry out the stated intent of Congress — not significant changes in policy.

In this case, the signing statement appears to weaken the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act’s reiteration of basic protections of first-class mail from searches without court approval.

If the Bush administration believes those protections are excessive in this era of terrorism — a highly dubious argument, considering the latitude in the law to inspect packages of suspicious nature or origin — then it had every opportunity to raise its concerns and to propose modifications while the bill was being aired on Capitol Hill.

“Just trust us,” seems to be the operative phrase of this administration.

However, history has shown the potential for government abuses in the absence of strong mail-privacy laws. Bush continues to roll back the clock — and the Constitution — with his signing statements.

Click here to read the original editorial from the San Francisco Chronicle