Surveillance

President Bush is not a monarch, said USA Today in an editorial. In a democracy, this should be self-evident. Yet ever since Sept. 11, Bush has insisted that as commander in chief, he's empowered by the Constitution to take any action he sees fit, from imprisoning alleged terrorists without charges to monitoring millions of phone calls without a court warrant in order to smoke out terrorist plots. 'œFortunately, the courts have begun to rein in his royal ambitions.' U.S. District Court Judge Anna Diggs Taylor of Detroit struck the latest blow last week, declaring Bush's warrantless surveillance program a flagrant violation of the Constitution. The White House, Taylor said, defiantly bypassed the special national-security court that Congress established for just this sort of operation. By refusing to submit its telephone and e-mail snooping to court and congressional oversight, she said, Bush has deliberately undermined the checks and balances that are the basis of American democracy. 'œThere are no hereditary kings in America,' Taylor chided.

Such 'œpurple prose' no doubt delights the Bush bashers, said The Wall Street Journal. But their celebration will be short-lived. Most legal experts give the ruling little chance of surviving appeal. Taylor, a well-known liberal activist, has advanced an expansive view of the Fourth Amendment, claiming it always requires 'œprior warrants for any reasonable search.' No reasonable judge believes that. In her eagerness to embarrass a Republican president, Taylor also conveniently ignores federal court precedents that grant the commander in chief wide latitude to keep the country safe—especially in monitoring phone calls to and from foreign sources, the target of this program. Taylor's decision is not only 'œstunningly amateurish,' said Bryan Cunningham in National Review Online. It's dangerous. By preventing the administration from intercepting terrorist communications, she would 'œmake our government go deaf and dumb to those who would murder us en masse.'

But even in wartime, the law is the law, said law professor Jonathan Turley in the Chicago Tribune. If other courts uphold this decision, the implications are grave, for it would mean the president of the United States has committed a felony—dozens of them, in fact. That's why congressional Republicans are frantically trying to give Bush's spying program ex post facto legitimacy, and shield it from further judicial review. The way out of this dilemma is simple, said The Philadelphia Inquirer. 'œProceed constitutionally.' Procedures already exist to permit spying on America's enemies, and if new procedures are needed, Congress should be asked to grant them. 'œThe nation can be safeguarded without forsaking its core values.'

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