Replies

Thirty-five years ago, President Richard Nixon claimed constitutional authority to wiretap Americans' phone calls to protect national security without asking a judge -- the same assertion that President Bush is making today in the name of fighting terrorism. The Supreme Court ruled unanimously against Nixon, saying the Constitution granted the powers he was claiming to judges, not presidents. If the current court eventually reconsiders that 1972 ruling, it may affect the fate of Bush's decision to authorize the National Security Agency to wiretap calls between Americans and alleged al Qaeda suspects in foreign countries. Presidents have approved wiretaps without court orders since the 1940s, but the legality of the practice was thrown into doubt after the Supreme Court ruled in 1967 that electronic eavesdropping was a search, and thus covered by the prohibition on unreasonable searches in the Constitution's Fourth Amendment.

One little factoid left out of this article is that this applies to civil matters not enemy combatants during a time of war. We are at war. The Constitution does not apply to enemies who seek our destruction.