Is the Bush Administration Reading Your Mail?

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Image courtesy of the U.S. Department of State.

Every recent president has made signing statements, but the Bush administration has raised it to an art form. U.S. Politics Guide Kathy Gill writes about President Bush's signing statement on the new Postal Accountability and Enforcement Act (H.R. 6407), where the president simultaneously signed a bill preventing warrantless review of mail and attached a signing statement stating that he would conduct searches in violation of the law "in exigent circumstances."

So what exactly does "exigent" mean? There are two ways to read the signing statement: One an acknowledgment of the "ticking bomb" scenario in which we would expect a member of the executive branch to intervene, even in violation of law, in the event of a truly imminent and catastrophic threat. But the other rests in the fact that the word "exigent," taken by itself, is a matter of perspective. Sweepstakes entries frequently have exigent messages on them--"Open this envelope within the next six hours and you could win five million dollars!" You can't spend much time at a coffee shop without hearing somebody make an exigent demand for a triple latte, decaf, no foam. Sometimes my dog has an exigent need to go out at three in the morning. (It doesn't get much more exigent than that, does it?) The point is that "exigent" means pretty much whatever the Bush administration wants it to mean. Words like "dire," "deadly," and even "necessary" are left by the wayside; in their place, we get "exigent." I find this interesting.

So does John C. Dvorak, who writes:

What? Are we living in a Gulag where everything is scrutinized, censored, examined? This is horrible.This is the fastest way to build a dossier on anyone.

But the thing about signing statements is that they're statements of executive intent with no legislative merit. They have about the same amount of binding authority as the weekly radio address. So is it really sensible to read "exigent" as a new standard? My colleague Robert Longley suggests that this whole exigency business isn't quite as dramatic as it might first appear:

I really don’t get the need for the signing statement, unless Bush thought the wording of the Act somehow negated the long-standing authority of postal officials to immediately open and inspect "ticking" mail, and get a warrant afterwards. Doing so is just common sense and no act of Congress or president is going to change it.

If the fear is that he’ll use the signing statement to initiate the willy-nilly opening of domestic letters under the war on terror mandate, forget it. There is no way the postal service can take the time to screen regular mail against any list of suspected terrorists — or political enemies. That would be far easier to do with email, which is of course, a whole other concern.

This leaves us with the distinct possibility that this is just political posturing--a way for Bush to tick off civil libertarians, and make himself appear to be "tough on terror" as the result of any subsequent controversy.

What do you think? Click "Comments" below and share your thoughts.

See also:

• Imperial Presidency 101
• Big Brother is Watching
• War on Terror 101
• President Clinton's Legacy and the Unitary Executive Theory