Bush Claims He Can Open Your Mail Without Warrant

So Bush is now claiming the power to read your mail without a warrant. I'm not surprised and that in and of itself is annoying.

There was a bit Postal Bill and Bush signed it in to law on December 20th and of course, issued a sigining statement. It sounds like many of the others he signed, I'm beginning to be able to recognize the trends. In places where the law sets minimum requirements on appointees (in this case, managing organizations of more than 50,000 people as opposed to say running horse shows). On such things Bush claims the law limits the pool of qualified candidates and he'll appoint who he wants since he's the "unitary executive". He's been so good at that so far.

In other places where he doesn't want to obey the law he just signed he'll write something like "The executive branch shall construe section xxx consistent with the President's constitutional authority to (supervise the unitary executive branch, conduct the Nation's foreign affairs, protect the nation).

As for opening your mail, he wrote: "The executive branch shall construe subsection 404(c) of title 39, as enacted by subsection 1010(e) of the Act, which provides for opening of an item of a class of mail otherwise sealed against inspection, in a manner consistent, to the maximum extent permissible, with the need to conduct searches in exigent circumstances, such as to protect human life and safety against hazardous materials, and the need for physical searches specifically authorized by law for foreign intelligence collection."

And for this kind of stuff it usually all comes down to the legal use of the word "exigent" vs say "emergency" or "imminent danger" or other terms that have specific differences in law as opposed to common usage, much like obscene vs. indecent. Still, this is just one more reason to dislike Bush.