Bush phone program sends a bad message

Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.) ended his defense of the National Security Agency’s phone data program with this: “We are a nation at war. Unauthorized disclosures of classified information only help terrorists and our enemies -- and put American lives at risk” (Opinion, May 13).

We are first a nation of laws, and an illegal activity should not be protected by his claims that revealing it helps our enemies. Those who break the law are also our enemies. If we need domestic surveillance, then let’s debate its merits openly and then create a law to justify it. Unauthorized gathering of classified information also helps terrorists and our enemies -- and puts American liberties at risk.

ROY WILSON

West Covina

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Hoekstra highlights the key point in the debate about the Bush administration’s Terrorist Surveillance Program. Hoekstra states: “President Bush’s job is to defend our nation and prevent another terrorist attack.” In fact, our Constitution specifically requires the president to take an oath that he will “faithfully execute the office of president of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

That is his job. If he rejects that duty, he must be impeached.

The Bush administration uses the purported threat of terrorism as justification for tearing apart the Constitution. This unchecked abrogation of power to Bush is the danger now faced by our democracy. Those vested with the duty to resist must act urgently to control this abuse. I refer here to the supposedly free press, the Democratic opposition and the voter.

JOHN STRAIN

Redondo Beach

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It is time to call the bluff of the Bush administration and Republican water-carriers like Hoekstra: We are not a nation at war. The so-called war on terror has never been a war. It is a threat from a wide variety of autonomous groups that hate us. But it is not a war, and we cannot justify abandoning our laws to fight it.

There are other threats, equally dangerous. The founding fathers knew about them and created a system of checks and balances that Bush and Hoekstra want to circumvent. George Orwell knew about these threats too, and he wrote about a world in which governmental spying on citizens and above-the-law authoritarianism was the norm. Bush and Hoekstra are taking us down that road. They must be stopped.

BILL BURNETT

Altadena