| Topic: |
Science > Abortion |
| User: |
"james g. keegan jr." |
| Date: |
19 Aug 2006 04:31:19 PM |
| Object: |
Ruling for the Law |
Ruling for the Law
The New York Times | Editorial
Friday 18 August 2006
Ever since President Bush was forced to admit that he was spying
on Americans' telephone calls and email without warrants, his lawyers
have fought to keep challenges to the program out of the courts.
Yesterday, that plan failed. A federal judge in Detroit declared the
eavesdropping program to be illegal and unconstitutional. She also
offered a scathing condemnation of what lies behind the wiretapping -
Mr. Bush's attempt to expand his powers to the point that he can
place himself beyond the reach of Congress, judges or the
Constitution.
"There are no hereditary kings in America and no powers not
created by the Constitution," wrote Judge Anna Diggs Taylor of the
United States District Court in Detroit. Her decision was based on a
lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union.
She said Mr. Bush violated the 1978 Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act when he ordered the National Security Agency to spy
without a warrant on international phone calls and e-mail by
Americans and foreign residents of the United States. She noted that
the surveillance law was passed to prohibit just this sort of
presidential abuse of power and provided ample flexibility for
gathering vital intelligence. She also said that the program violated
the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable searches and
seizures, as well as the rights of free speech and association
granted by the First Amendment.
The ruling eviscerated the absurd notion on which the
administration's arguments have been based: that Congress authorized
Mr. Bush to do whatever he thinks is necessary when it authorized the
invasion of Afghanistan.
It's good news that this ruling exists at all. Mr. Bush's lawyers
tried to have the entire suit thrown out on national security
grounds, a tactic they have used in an alarming number of cases. In
one particularly appalling example, they persuaded federal judges to
refuse to hear a lawsuit filed by an innocent German citizen of
Lebanese birth who was snatched out of his private life, illegally
imprisoned for five months and tortured by American jailers.
In this case, the administration told Judge Taylor that merely
arguing its case would expose top secret information. Judge Taylor
said she had reviewed the secret material and concluded it was not
relevant. The secrecy claim, she said, was "disingenuous and without
merit."
No sooner had this ruling been issued than Mr. Bush's loyalists
in Congress, who have been searching for ways to give legal cover to
an illegal spying program, began calling for new laws to overcome
Judge Taylor's objections. Republicans quickly pointed out that Judge
Taylor was appointed by President Jimmy Carter and that some of the
many precedents she cited were written by liberal judges. These
efforts to undermine Judge Taylor's arguments will undoubtedly
continue while the White House appeals the decision, and the outcome
in the conservative Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals is uncertain.
But for now, with a careful, thoroughly grounded opinion, one
judge in Michigan has done what 535 members of Congress have so
abysmally failed to do. She has reasserted the rule of law over a
lawless administration and shown why issues of this kind belong
within the constitutional process created more than two centuries ago
to handle them.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/081906A.shtml
.
|
|
|
Related Articles |
|
|
