Tyranny on the loose

In all the recent media coverage of Barack Obama's bowling, Hillary Clinton's downing a shot and a beer, and John McCain's plea-for-attention proposal to suspend the gas tax for the summer, you may have missed an astonishing bit of news: the Bush Administration appears to have covertly suspended part of the Constitution.

In a footnote to the recently released memo by former Justice Department lawyer John Yoo, reference is made to a secret document that mentions the Fourth Amendment -- you know, the one that protects us against "unreasonable searches and seizures" by the government. This bedrock precept of our democracy has "no application to domestic military operations," wrote Yoo.

As an opinion from a high-ranking DOJ lawyer, this document would theoretically guide the actions of government agents, in this case allowing the military to walk onto the private property of citizens and take possession of their property and their person. Of course, much more likely is the collecting of our phone calls and emails, which some people might say is OK, but many feel clearly violates the Constitution. Bush and his cohorts must have felt that it did so, and therefore, they overruled it.

In an administration that has trampled the sacred text of our society at every turn, this is one of the most egregious violations yet.