Still another change would purport to eliminate the need to comply with the Fourth Amendment's warrant requirement for searches conducted in the United States:

[T]he original compromise said that evidence seized "outside the United States" could be admitted in court even if it had been obtained without a search warrant, a provision Republicans and Democrats agreed was necessary to deal with the unusual circumstances of seizing evidence on the battlefield. The bill introduced Monday dropped the words "outside the United States," which Democrats said meant that prosecutors could ignore American legal standards on search warrants within the country.

Bill Frist assures us that these are just "technical changes." That's an obvious lie. These are substantive changes designed to broaden executive power at the expense of fundamental fairness. Having been caught trying to reinistate trials based on secret evidence, Republicans call the elimination of the right to "examine" evidence a "drafting error." Right. The error would be to allow this bill to pass unchallenged.

According to the NY Times, some Democrats say "the changes to the bill had not yet reached a level that would cause them to try to block it altogether." So secret trials, the repeal of habeas corpus and the Fourth Amendment, and expansion of military trials to acts committed by U.S. citizens on U.S. soil isn't enough? What will it take to get your attention, Dems? Perhaps a provision permitting the president to define any political opposition to this policies as "material support for hostilities against the United States"?