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"So?"
So I'm a conservative and believe there is value is history.

A warrant is not required for a policeman to search the person of a detainee, or in some other dire circumstances which are not "unreasonable".
You can't just leave "unreasonable" out of the 4th (without Amending the Constitution again) and it is basically on that basis that national security investigations are differentiated from criminal ones by the courts.
I am no lawyer, that's my understanding from "In re: Sealed Case No. 02-001"; haven't seen a ruling on National Security Letters.

There's an obvious conflict here between the president's Article II war powers and the 4th Amendment.
I prefer the FISA method of dealing with the conflict to this National Security Letter method- judicial review is maintained despite the "dire" circumstances.
That the Secret Service needs this power to protect the president from non-foreign threats is not at all clear to me.

I confess I have only skimmed this thread because I am at work, But:

Doesn't the patriot act and this new act have expiration dates?
Aren't special provisions in order considering we are at war?

Please don't attack me--disagree, educate, but no attacks please.

Police may conduct a search where it's not possible to get a warrant because the trail is still hot. It's like the President being able to "repel sudden attacks" without getting a Congressional declaration of war. There's a world of difference between cases requiring immediate action, and the more routine day-to-day operations of government. That distinction is understood by the law, and has always been an implicit part of it, well before our country was even settled.

What you're talking about is something completely different. All someone in government has to do is claim that there's a "national security" justification, and presto!, everything he does is legal. There is nothing in the Constitution, or the legal framework in which it was written, that allows this legal concept. In fact, it was written with a view to combat that notion.

Now, the 4th amendment wasn't written so that the people conducting the searches would be the ones to decide whether the searches are reasonable. That was the job of judges. How did they communicate this determination to the people doing the searches? By issuing warrants. That's the system that was prescribed, and anything else is a clear departure from it.