Excerpt from How Would A Patriot Act? by Glenn Greenwald, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Upon drawing these conclusions, I developed, for the first time in my life, a sense of urgency about the need to take a stand for our country and its defining principles. I believe that the concentrated and unlimited power now claimed by President Bush constitutes a true crisis for the United States—that it has the potential to fundamentally change our national character, to irreversibly restrict our individual liberties and to radically alter our core principles. It is not hyperbole to observe that we are moving away from the founding principles of our constitutional republic towards theories of powers that the founders identified as the hallmarks of tyranny.

Despite the significance of these developments, Bush's radical theories of power have barely even been acknowledged, let alone analyzed and trumpeted, by the national media. One of the few places where any of these issues were being discussed was on the Internet, on online political web logs, or "blogs."

In October 2005, I started my own blog, and chose as its name "Unclaimed Territory"—a declaration that my particular political passion has no grounding in any partisan loyalties or ideologies. Instead, my passion emanates almost entirely from a fervent and deeply held belief in the supremacy of our constitutional principles and the corresponding duty of every American citizen to defend these liberties when they are under assault. Although I lacked any specific plan, I created my blog with the goal of finding a way to discuss and publicize just how radical and extreme the Bush administration had become. My blog quickly grew far beyond anything I imagined, with a daily readership of 10,000 within three months.

On December 15, 2005, The New York Times published a journalistic bombshell when it revealed that for the last four years, the National Security Agency has been eavesdropping on American citizens in violation of the law—because it had been ordered to do so by President Bush. From the start of the NSA eavesdropping scandal, I began writing every day about what I believed were the profoundly important legal, political, and constitutional issues raised by the Bush administration's secret surveillance program.

This is not about eavesdropping. This is about whether we are a nation of laws and whether, in the name of our fear of terrorists, we will abandon the principles of government that have made our country great and strong for more than two centuries.

My blog has become one of the principal online gathering places for citizens of every ideological perspective and background who are truly alarmed by the law-breaking powers seized by the Bush administration, and who want to take a stand in defense of the principles of government and the Constitution. Original reporting on my blog led directly to frontpage news stories on the NSA scandal in media outlets such as The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and Knight-Ridder. And when the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on March 31, 2006, regarding Senator Russ Feingold's resolution to formally censure the president, Senator Feingold read from my blog as he questioned one of the committee's witnesses, former Nixon White House Counsel John Dean. Let it not be said that our voices cannot be heard in the halls of government.

I began my blog because I believed my country needed whatever talents or knowledge I had to offer. Our basic system of constitutional liberties is at risk. I say that because we are a country in which the president has said—expressly and repeatedly—that he has the power to act without restraints, including the power to break the law. He has not only claimed these powers but has exercised them repeatedly over the course of several years. And he still has more than two and a half years left in office.

Even when the other checks on our government fail, citizens always have the ability to take a stand for their country. For that to happen, the first requirement is that Americans be fully informed of the objective facts regarding just how radical and extreme our government has become under George W. Bush, and the sweeping, genuinely un-American powers that one man has claimed. I began my blog to provide those facts and to take a stand in defense of our nation's founding principles. That is also why I've written the book you now hold in your hands.

Copyright by Glenn Greenwald.  All rights reserved. No part of this book maybe transmitted in any form by any means without permission in writing from the publisher, Working Assets Publishing (www.workingassetspublishing.com).