The One-Handed Economist

…shall stop Dubya from reading the US mail.

Now, far be it from me to discourage a learning-disabled person from trying to read more, but I’d rather that he not read MY private mail. However, Bush has decided to attach a signing statement to a postal reform bill affirming his right to open mail without a warrant when he deems it necessary.

Now, the law already allows the executive branch to open mail on an emergency basis, if, say, the bomb squad needs to examine a package for a bomb. And the bill that he signed doesn’t revoke that power, but it does affirm the need for a warrant in most cases. So it’s not really clear why he’d want to add such a signing statement unless he wants to take a very expansive view of his power to open mail. Which is always a troubling sign.

I know what the inevitable response will be: What do you care if the government reads a terrorist’s mail? The answer is that I couldn’t care less if the government opens a terrorist’s mail, but I’d like it if they only use this power on terrorists (or at least people strongly suspected of being in communication with terrorists). One good way to make sure that the power is applied sparingly is to require that warrants be obtained before searches. That’s not exactly a novel idea. I’m pretty sure it’s somewhere in the Constitution…

Now, some might think that the insistence on warrants is a rather picky thing, but consider why the law on warrants for opening mail was strengthened in the 1970’s:

Sharp limits have been placed on the government’s power to open mail since the 1970s, when a congressional committee investigating abuses found that, for three decades, the CIA and FBI had illegally opened hundreds of thousands of pieces of U.S. mail. Among the targets were “large numbers of American dissidents, including those who challenged the condition of racial minorities and those who opposed the war in Vietnam,” according to a report by the Senate panel, known as the Church committee. Also surveilled was “the mail of Senators, Congressmen, journalists, businessmen, and even a Presidential candidate,” the report said.

So it’s not entirely paranoid to think that if an executive power is not restrained, if it is exercised without judicial oversight, then it might be abused.

Anyway, if Bush is indeed opening mail without warrants (a plausible suspicion, given how eager he is to assert his right to do so), then there is a bright side: If there’s something that you want the government to read, just address it to a person with an Arab name and put it in the mail.

I’m mailing a copy of the Bill of Rights to a Muslim colleague of mine.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 8th, 2007 at 8:45 pm and is filed under National, Politics, Current Events. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.