In my Sunday column, which we’ve already posted online, I discuss President Bush’s controversial crusade to convince Congress to give him essentially unfettered power to snoop on Americans suspected of consorting with terrorists.

Like many civil libertarians, I’m upset that the Bush administration wants to eliminate the already minimal justification that the intelligence agencies must make to a secret court to  eavesdrop on Americans. (Under current law, the feds can start wiretapping anyone, but must quickly get permission from a secret court — a court that has almost never said no — to continue.)

And I’m also angry that he wants to give telecom companies immunity against lawsuits for cooperating with illegal wiretap requests in the past and future. AT&T, the worst offender, gave the National Security Agency access to the email of millions of Americans without any legal justification. You bet the company should be sued (and has been). Since when are companies supposed to turn over private information just because some government official wants it? Heck, Congress ripped into Yahoo for giving the Chinese government e-mail information about dissidents there, so why do they want to condone such police tactics in the U.S.? 

To me, this is just an extension of Bush’s systematic trampling of civil rights in the name of fighting terrorism. We’ve got the Patriot Act (which the bright-as-a-bullet Bush confused with his new proposal, the “Protect America Act,” during his news conference Thursday). We have the establishment of indefinite detention without charges and military-only trials for aliens held at Guantanamo. And of course, there’s the waterboarding, extraordinary rendition and Abu Ghraib nastiness.

Sadly, Congress, despite all its posturing and pontificating, has gone along with all of it. That just hands victory to the terrorists: fear of them is making us abandon core American values.

I don’t usually write about the Iraq war in this space. The war doesn’t fall within the primary focus of this blog, and it’s such a divisive subject that I’ve hesitated to bring it up.
But I have strong feelings about the war, as do my colleagues on the editorial board. And since I post virtually all of my other editorials on this blog, I decided that it doesn’t make sense to hold back on the biggest issue of the day.

I was the principal author of the piece that appeared today urging the Democrats to continue pressing President Bush to commit to some kind of timetable for withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq.

No additional commentary from me — the editorial speaks for itself.