For eight years they called us paranoid for our fear of what the Bush administration was doing behind closed doors. No not paranoid, prescient.

The Obama administration threw open the curtain on years of Bush-era secrets Monday, revealing anti-terror memos that claimed exceptional search-and-seizure powers and divulging that the CIA destroyed nearly 100 videotapes of interrogations and other treatment of terror suspects.

The Justice Department released nine legal opinions showing that, following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the Bush administration determined that certain constitutional rights would not apply during the coming fight. Within two weeks, government lawyers were already discussing ways to wiretap U.S. conversations without warrants.

The legal memos written by the Bush administration's Office of Legal Counsel show a government grappling with how to wage war on terrorism in a fast-changing world. The conclusion, reiterated in page after page of documents, was that the president had broad authority to set aside constitutional rights.

Fourth Amendment protections against unwarranted search and seizure, for instance, did not apply in the United States as long as the president was combatting terrorism, the Justice Department said in an Oct. 23, 2001, memo.

"First Amendment speech and press rights may also be subordinated to the overriding need to wage war successfully," Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo wrote, adding later: "The current campaign against terrorism may require even broader exercises of federal power domestically."

On Sept. 25, 2001, Yoo discussed possible changes to the laws governing wiretaps for intelligence gathering. In that memo, he said the government's interest in keeping the nation safe following the terrorist attacks might justify warrantless searches.

That memo did not specifically attempt to justify the government's warrantless wiretapping program, but it provided part of the foundation.

Yoo, now a professor at the University of California at Berkeley School of Law, did not return messages seeking comment.

The memos reflected a belief within the Bush administration that the president had broad powers that could not be checked by Congress or the courts. That stance, in one form or another, became the foundation for many policies: holding detainees at Guantanamo Bay, eavesdropping on U.S. citizens without warrants, using tough new CIA interrogation tactics and locking U.S. citizens in military brigs without charges.

This cannot be allowed to go unpunished.

Our Constitution is not, as George Bush once claimed, a "goddamn piece of paper" to be cast aside when it becomes an encumbrance to those who want to stomp all over the rights of American citizens. It is a fortress which holds the barbarians at bay, and keeps them from raping, and pillaging the rights so carefully laid for us by our forefathers.

The Bush administration has spit into the eyes of Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, James Madison, Thomas Paine, John Dickinson, and many, many other brave men who slaved to create a document that would stand the test of time and protect the American people from tyranny for the entire existence of this amazing experiment which we call America. For when the rights guaranteed by that document are taken away from our citizens then America will simply cease to exist.

Any person, or group of persons, who are found to have undermined these fundamental rights MUST be punished. What George Bush and his minions did to this country is nothing short of treason and it must be punished accordingly.

I call on President Obama, the Senate, and the House to do their duty and bring those who have conspired to destroy this nation to justice. And remember, the world is watching.