With the new stories about the president claiming the inherent constitutional authority to not only listen in on selected phone calls without a warrant, he now believes he has the power to “data mine” our phone records. That is he has allowed the NSA and the CIA and god knows who else collect data about millions of phone calls.

That means that is a very very very good chance that the government has spied on YOU. It may not be listening to your phone calls or reading your emails (but they can, and they might be) but they are adding you to large databases and using your phone habits to “create patterns”, all without a warrant.

I see shadows of the Nixon administration. When the government was spying on Martin Luther King Jr. and others that they did not agree with. In fact Nixon’s actions where why we originally passed the laws that Bush has been breaking.

This is not a partisan issue. Conservative or liberal, you should not want the president to do these things without a warrant. People who fully agree with Bush may not be concerned about the current actions in the white house, but if you are a conservative and a powerful liberal president takes power you might not feel the same way.

I don’t want any president to be able to listen to my phone calls without a warrant, and I don’t want my data being swept up and put in data bases without a warrant. Data bases can be hacked, and the temptation of the power of “knowing what your enemies are saying about you” can be too strong for even the best leaders. Better if no one is able to do these things without oversight, be it from a judge, or the Congress.

Lets be very clear, sometimes we need to use signal intelligence (tapping phones, collecting data) to help prevent terror attacks. That is NOT what I am talking about. What I am talking about is the tapping of phones and the collecting of data WITHOUT A WARRANT! This oversight is here for a reason. When there is no oversight, and no warrant, we get “when the president does it it’s not a crime” Nixon like actions.

As a citizen I am concerned for my rights to privacy, I do not want anyone listening to my phone calls, or collecting my data, unless a warrant has been issued. The reason we have checks and balances is to prevent the abuse of power, without oversight, and limitation of domestic eavesdropping we will create an atmosphere of fear in which the citizens are afraid to protest against the people in power. In effect breaking down the very foundation that our democracy is built upon.

This is not the first time that a president has used the motive of protecting the nation durring war time to overreach constitutional bounds. Lincoln suspended habeas corpus during the Civil War, FDR interned the Japanese during WW2, Truman tried to seize the steel mines during the Korean war. And history has looked back on all of them as horrible mistakes.

I believe that the issue is clear, Bush has broken the law, if the minority party gets control of the house or senate we will see a “season of investigations” and perhaps an impeachment proceeding. Speak up, let your congress person know how you feel about this… while you still can.