csmonitor.com

Friday, January 5, 2007

In a move that experts say contradicted the postal reform bill he had just signed into law, President Bush quietly issued a "signing statement" two weeks ago that claimed he has the right to open Americans' first-class US mail without a judge's warrant. The New York Daily News reports that the signing statement was issued on Dec. 20 after the president signed the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act, an act which dealt with mostly 'mundane reform measures' but which also strongly reinforced protections against opening mail without a warrant.

The Daily News says those who have seen the signing statement say it seems to take executive authority far beyond even the limits the Bush administration has pursued in the past few years, and in ways such that the new powers could be easily abused.

"The [Bush] signing statement claims authority to open domestic mail without a warrant, and that would be new and quite alarming," said Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies in Washington.

"The danger is they're reading Americans' mail," she said.

"You have to be concerned," agreed a career senior US official who reviewed the legal underpinnings of Bush's claim. "It takes Executive Branch authority beyond anything we've ever known."

Dan Froomkin notes in his Washington Post "White House Briefing" blog that even though the Daily News was two weeks late on the story, it still has a scoop because Mr. Bush's signing statements "have been widely ignored by the traditional media." The one exception was the piece by Charles Savage of the Boston Globe that showed that as of April last year, Bush had issued 750 signing statements that said he had the authority to disobey laws enacted by Congress (and signed into law by him) if he thought it was appropriate.