Amendment rights,
granted by the Constitution? And why is the Military monitoring the
communications of Americans on U.S. soil and working with domestic law
enforcement?

Well, one day President Truman issued a secret order creating the NSA.

As testified by Library of Congress members on C-SPAN, the names of these
presidential findings change with administrations. They are called variously
Presidential Decision Directives, National Security Council Decision
Directives, Executive Orders, etc.

One might think these special override-the-constitution presidential
directives (which came out of nowhere) would be used for short-term
emergencies.

Wrong: the NSA is now a HUGE intelligence organization, eating billions
and billions and billions and billions of dollars in budgets each year,
and monitoring billions of messages a day.

*   "Spying Budget Is Made Public By Mistake", By Tim Weiner
*   The New York Times, November 5 1994
*   
*   By mistake, a Congressional subcommittee has published an unusually
*   detailed breakdown of the highly classified "black budget" for United
*   States intelligence agencies.
*   
*   In previously defe