Return to sender

Oh, so is the government's executive branch trying to claim it has the right to open our mail without warrants or immediate safety concerns?\nIn a signing statement attached to a Dec. 20 postal-reform bill, the White House said it would interpret a section of the bill -- and it's a doozy -- "which provides for opening of an item of a class of mail otherwise sealed against inspection, in a manner consistent, to the maximum extent permissible, with the need to conduct searches in exigent circumstances, such as to protect human life and safety against hazardous materials, and the need for physical searches specifically authorized by law for foreign intelligence collection."\nNote: Signing statements are declarations of how the executive branch should enforce -- or, more controversially, interpret -- a law.\nIt's that "maximum extent permissible" part that makes me, the American Civil Liberties Union and assorted others nervous. Current law allows authorities to open your mail (a) after getting a warrant; (b) if they have a reasonable suspicion that it is an urgent threat (your package is ticking, glowing, spilling white power); (c) before getting a warrant in limited, emergency situations under the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act or (d) if it can't be delivered as addressed, so the post office can search it for another destination address or return address.\nTo be fair, both the president and the post office have denied that the statement represents a change in government policy, instead saying they were merely making clear that the bill would maintain previous executive powers. The Associated Press has quoted Tom Day, senior vice president of government relations for the Postal Service, as saying: "As has been the long-standing practice, first-class mail is protected from unreasonable search and seizure when in postal custody. Nothing in the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act changes this protection. The president is not exerting any new authority."\nAnd it's not like the noise about this is coming from otherwise neutral sources. In the Washington Post's Jan. 5 coverage of Capitol Hill reaction, criticism of the signing statement came from Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer. And despite its occasional token defense of some right-wing nut's free-speech rights, the ACLU is about as nonpartisan as the IU College Republicans. \nAll that said, as someone who trends more right than left, this signing statement worries me. As recently as 2005, the government displayed just how far this "maximum extent" can reach, when documents attained by the ACLU through the Freedom of Information Act revealed that the Department of Defense had monitored the e-mails of nonviolent college anti-war protesters after they disrupted business at a recruitment center and vandalized recruiters' vehicles (as mentioned in an Indiana Daily Student staff editorial from Oct. 27, 2006).\nSo, the prez says the signing statement doesn't extend his powers? OK, let's revise the statement to make that clear: If I want wildly off-base interpretations of text, I'll ask a post-modernist English prof, thank you very much.