The National Security Agency uses local law enforcement agencies to track members of anti-war groups as they prepare for protests, internal NSA documents show, according to the Baltimore Sun.

This practice is not an entirely new thing. The Nixon administration used law enforcement in the 1960s and early 1970s to spy on groups opposing the war in Vietnam and civil rights groups. In response, Congress passed the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, making the practice illegal.

What is new is that the Bush administration has now admitted using the NSA to spy on American citizens, in clear violation of the law, according to most legal experts. A fierce debate is now going on in Washington about the practice in the context of the so-called "war on terror," with Republican lawyers scrambling to cobble together a legal justification for stomping all over the Constitution.

Samuel Alito, Bush's latest nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court, if confirmed, could help the administration pass a legal justification. As we have reported here a number of times already, Alito has authored memos in the past putting forward a novel legal theory called "unitary executive authority," which would allow the president to circumvent the law in a "time of war."

But according to the Constitution, only Congress can declare war, and the "war on terror" is not a declared war against another state. So the debate will hinge, in part, on whether the attacks on 9/11 were an act of war or a crime.

If the Democrats were in power, it would be handled as a crime and chances are we would not be involved in this illegal war in Iraq. It serves the Republican Party to call it "war," so that's where we are. The American people have a say in this, but the Bush administration is good at keeping people so afraid that they will not speak out against it. Thus our present dilemma.

If the American people would stand up against this - especially those who like to call themselves conservatives who are at heart civil libertarians who do not want the federal government to become like the Big Brother depicted in George Orwell's book 1984 - there is a chance to turn the situation around and restore trust in the American government at home and abroad.

If the American people remain silent, like the German people did in the run up to war in Nazi Germany in the late 1930s, then American democracy is on the brink of being doomed to the dustbin of history.