The "Protect America Act"...

...Has less to do with protecting America than it does with accruing more power to the Executive branch under the guise of national security. Let's look at some of it s provisions.

First is the retroactive immunity to lawsuits for those companies which participated in the electronic surveillance of US citizens without a court order/ warrant. If such behavior is legal, as the Bush administration asserts, why do these corporations require such immunity?

The report to the FISA court under this piece of legislation would detail only how the program deals with the intercepts of persons "reasonably believed" to be overseas. What becomes of those intercepts of electronic communications from ordinary Americans caught up in this fishing expedition is not detailed at all, let alone mentioned.

The bi-annual reports to congressional Judicial and Intelligence sub-committees will contain information only about the violations of the secret guidelines used by the Attorney General to target subjects of surveillance. Nor does the AG have to report on how many Americans' calls have been tapped, picked up incidentally or even how many Americans are official subjects of surveillance.

The current "sunset" clause of this pernicious law may be of little values as it will fall in the middle of a heated campaign season where there will be little, if any, enthusiasm for correcting the glaring deficiencies of this deeply flawed piece of legislation.

But most important is the nature of the "warrants"issued under this act. The Attorney General, not the court or other independent body, has the authority to issue warrants lasting up to a year against anyone "reasonably suspected" of being outside the US. The FISA court is cut entirely out of the loop. These warrants are also effectively "blanket warrants" which are a violation of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, and I quote,

...no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

With the Legislative and Judicial branches effectively out of the picture oversight of the Executive branch becomes a polite fiction, at best. At worst, it becomes totally non-existent.

The Bush administration has repeatedly argued that the process of obtaining individualized warrants is "too time consuming". But under the FISA Act of 1979, the AG has 72 hours within which to retroactively obtains a warrant after the surveillance has started, and in that nearly thirty years, only four, count 'em, FOUR requests for warrants from the FISA court have been denied.

Surveillance of the citizens of a country absent effective judicial or legislative oversight is a police state tactic of benefit to no one but those holding the reigns of power. Such authority sought by the Executive branch, under the guise of national security, is little more than a power grab intended to stifle dissent and eventually identify those dissenters and target them for punishment.

The Constitution was not crafted to make abuses of power convenient for any one branch of government, particularly the Executive branch. The system of checks and balances was designed to prevent such abuses. The GOP controlled Congress of 2000 to 2007, however, shamefully placed loyalty to party and president above their duties to their constituents and the Constitution, when it rubber-stamped the Bush administrations assault on the Constitution. But as far as Bush is concerned, "...It's just a god-damned piece of paper....", after all.