At the urging of President Bush and Karl Rove, Congress is poised to try to rush through legislation that would pardon the president and authorize more warrantless spying on Americans than has ever been approved in US history. The terrible Cheney-Specter proposal has morphed into an even worse proposal by outgoing Senator Frist and the White House (S. 3931) that would ratify the president’s claim of inherent, exclusive power to set government spies loose on your phone calls and emails at will, without any individualized warrant or independent check.

The bill would unloose the NSA to vacuum up the conversations of American residents and businesses without warrants if the location of everyone on a call or email is not known to be in the US. It would allow the Attorney General to compel, and pay-off, companies to give access to your phone conversations, e-mails and stored communications without any judicial check as long as the Executive branch claims -- to itself -- that it is looking for foreign intelligence. But there would be no requirement that a court be given any reason to believe an American were aiding terrorists before their spoken and written thoughts could be seized by the NSA and disseminated throughout the government.

In the House, the Wilson Bill (H.R. 5825) as re-written by the White House makes virtually identical changes to the law to allow the president to secretly search Americans’ homes, businesses, conversations and e-mails without warrants. Make no mistake about it: these White House-crafted bills would allow the NSA program to spy on Americans to continue without warrants and authorized even more warrantless surveillance of American residents than the president has even admitted. These bills are designed to legalize the president's illegal wiretapping and evade the requirements of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution.