Yoo Knows What?

The Obama Administration released nine Bush Administration Office of Legal Counsel legal memos by John Yoo and Robert Delahunty related to the war on terrorism today. NyTimes.com.

Did you know that the Constitution allows our military services raid or seize private property and wiretap in the United States?

“[One of the] memorand[a] discussed the use of military forces to carry out ‘raids on terrorist cells’ and even seize property.

‘The law has recognized that force (including deadly force) may be legitimately used in self-defense,’ Mr. Yoo and Mr. Delahunty wrote to Mr. Gonzales. Therefore any objections based on the Fourth Amendment’s ban on unreasonable searches are swept away, they said, since any possible privacy offense resulting from such a search is a lesser matter than any injury from deadly force.”

From the NYTimes.com. Here’s the memo itself.

If you can seize property and conduct a raid on private property in the U.S. without a warrant based on a war halfway across the world, what’s a domestic wiretap or two?

And if someone exercises their First Amendment rights to castigate such conduct?

“’First Amendment speech and press rights may also be subordinated to the overriding need to wage war successfully.’ [The memo] added that ‘the current campaign against terrorism may require even broader exercises of federal power domestically.’”

I wonder what else the Bush Administration was doing that hasn’t come to light yet.