To the editor:

Kansas Sen. Pat Roberts has secured his position as George Bush’s Capitol Hill lapdog.

First, as chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, he blocked any independent investigation into the false intelligence used by Bush to justify his bloody war in Iraq.

Now, he says the president was acting “consistent with U.S. law” when he ordered wiretap surveillance of U.S. citizens without – as required by law – first seeking authorization from a court set up by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Roberts conveniently forgets the other law that he and the president both pledged to uphold when they took office – the U.S. Constitution and its Fourth Amendment, which protect us against such unwarranted searches.

The Roberts logic: The president can ignore what the Constitution and our laws require because the nation is at war. That war was justified by one assumption – that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and was connected to the 9-11 attacks. The warrantless surveillance is based on a belief – that the nation must decide between our security and our civil liberties. We can and must preserve the individual rights that define and secure our existence as a democratic society.

Ted Frederickson,

Tonganoxie