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Government Seeks Dismissal of Spy Suit
The Wired blog 27B Stroke 6 is carrying the news that the US has filed a motion to drop the case the ACLU won in lower court against the government's warrantless wiretapping program. The government's appeal of that ruling will be heard on Wednesday, January 31 in front of the Sixth Circuit court of appeals. The feds argue that the case is now moot because they are now obtaining warrants from the FISA court, and furthermore President Bush did not renew the warrantless program. Turns out there's a Supreme Court precedent saying that if you were doing something illegal, get taken to court, and then stop the illegal activity, you're not off the hook. The feds argue in their petition that this precedent does not apply to them. Here is the government's filing (PDF).
So, before, it was necessary and legal and there was absolutely nothing wrong with it and whomever leaked the information on it was a traitor.
... now.
Now, it's back to the Court and warrants are being issued and there's no need to take this to the SCOTUS because we're not doing anything illegal
Just for that reason this MUST be seen by the SCOTUS.
This is still a Democracy.
In this type of case the Judicial Branch doesn't really have much teeth. While they can certainly punish individual members of the Executive Branch acting on their own, they can't punish those acting directly under the orders of the President. If they did the President would just pardon them and that would be the end of that. The only way that you can punish the President is to impeach him and then find him guilty of a crime and remove him from office. But Congress certainly doesn't have the votes for that.
For these reasons, this case is dead. Anything else will just be a waste of tax dollars.
being taken to court after you beat wife, but then claim the court case should be thrown out because you haven't beaten her since the court case started.
The feds argue in their petition that this precedent does not apply to them.
I wouldn't expect the feds to argue any different. King George and his regime have been arguing that the Constitution doesn't apply to them and the Bill of Rights doesn't apply to them. How could anyone think they'd accept prior case law as applying to them.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
Really. If I ever get caught in, say, a murder, I just stop killing anyone and I'm free.
Right?
Oh, wait. Doesn't that mean Bush should also stop hunting Bin Laden? I mean, he hasn't crashed any airliners into skycrapers for years now.
The mind boggles trying to follow what passes for "reason" in your government. I once thought Bush is stupid. I don't do that anymore. I think he has some unknown insanity that is contagious.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
This logic is the essence of the Bush Era. The theory is entirely devoted to power. All that matters in life is to whom you defer in power. If Bush acknowledges that a court, a Congress, or a TV audience has any power over him, that's the end of the issue. Only after an apocalyptic fight with every resource possible, including illegal means, torture, spies, assassinations, exposing covert agents, bribes, anything to attack the force asserting power over them. Then, when it looks like the new power will win, they try to bargain for changes to allow them to do what they were doing in exchange for admitting they used to do it, then claim "we were right all along". If they still lose, they take whatever lumps are offered (until now, practically nothing except perhaps purely symbolic, from their Republican Congress), then just do it anyway in secret - or through proxies, either corporate or overseas.
Because all that BushCo has learned from politics is the Nixon philosophy "it's only a crime when you get caught". Because the Bush admin made its bones in the Nixon admin.
These people will do anything for tyrannical powers, including use ones they don't actually have to get them. The Constitution is designed to stop such criminal tyrants: impeachment. It works only while the Constitution still has more power than the tyrants attacking it.
--
make install -not war
I take particular conflict with this statement. The fed's continued assertion that the program was lawful without FISA approval shows that they can, and will use this 'constitutional authority' again as the perceived need arises. On that basis alone, the balance of prejudice against state secrets powers, constitutional power of the executive brach during times of war and mootness versus the right of the people to use the last check in the federal system to prevent future harm is highly in favor of letting the case proceed.
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
This is the same trial, I think, in which one of the lawyers for the plaintiffs said he was studying Kafka as a refresher course on bizarre legal proceedings.
If the only goal of the plaintiffs was to seek an end of the government's wiretapping activities, then the government's request would not be illogical. One of the major disadvantages of the Common Law system is that it is so laborious and costly that only a minority of cases can actually be decided in court. Stopping a procedure to achieve a goal that is already achieved, would save time and money.
Unfortunately for the government, one of the plaintiffs is seeking civil damages, because documents that got accidentally in the "wrong" hands, revealed that it was being illegally spied upon. And this damages part of the trial clearly cannot be avoided by simply stopping the snooping, as it applies to the past. The US government's position on this appears to be that it cannot be prosecuted because all evidence against it is secret (how convenient) and should never have been seen by the plaintiffs, their lawyers, or the court. It did not yet file a formal request to have any memory of it erased from their minds, but I am sure that is only because they lack the technology, not because they have an scruples about it.
This, of course, is only the civil side of the issue. I think possible criminal prosecution is still open regardless of what is decided in this case, although it may have to wait for the end of the Bush administration.
As far as I remember, in some Italian republics of the Renaissance government officials were sent to court automatically after the end of their tenure. They had to account for their actions in office and clear their names of accusations of abuse of power. Maybe that is a system the USA should be considering again.
I love it when accountability works -- you know, checks and balances, blind justice, and so on and so forth.
Do as I say not as I do should be the new motto on the money.
These stories are free but worth money.
"which means the president now has to get everything approved by a group with conflicting views."
To put the brakes on his power, they have to pass laws. But he can veto those laws, so the true power is still with the President.
Congress didn't vote for warrant less spying on Americans, and this change he's made is cosmetic, yet there is nothing Congress can directly do.
Until they get the 2/3rds majority they can only delay anything that requires extra money, but as Cheney has stated, he will simply dissect bills into small pieces and hide them in the normal budget. So the budget is a weak means to curbing the administrations power grab.
We're not out of the worst of this yet, we have another 2 years of this crap.
I certainly hope that the judges hearing the appeal (and the Supremes when it gets to them) have the intestinal fortitude to assert their authority. The problem with this whole case is that the Bush administraation does whatever it wants regardless of the law. A President who had any respect for the Constitution and the rule of law would never have started this program in the first place. The fact that Bush and his co-conspirators have decided to stop this program tells me that they have simply started another one somewhere within the government's huge espionage sector. They are indeed trying to remove themselves and their actions from scrutiny so that they can carry on as they want over in the dark corners of the room.
I have no confidence that Bush will obey any adverse ruling that comes out of this case. After all, to do so would undermine the "unitary executive" theory of government upon which he bases his dictatorial actions. I suspect that, in the back of his little twisted mind, he thinks he's immune to actions by the other branches of government. After all, "How many divisions does the Supreme Court have?" In the final analysis it's only the willingness of each branch of government to abide by decisions made by another that makes our form of government work. With his signing statements Bush has repeatedly demonstrated that only he, as the "unitary executive", will make the determination of how a law is to be interpreted or enforced. The Attorney General has recently stated in Senate hearings that the civil liberties embodied in our Constitution do not apply all the time: http://www.lewrockwell.com/eddlem/eddlem14.html. Given that mindset there is nothing to prevent this President from deciding that he is not subject to rulings of the courts and I'm sure that he will have no problem getting a ruling to that effect from his AG and others in his administration.
This country is facing a Constitutional crisis that makes the Watergate affair pale by comparison. Between a President who believes that he is not bound by the rule of law and willingly believes whatever twisted interpretation of same will allow him to achieve his ends while appearing to act within the law and a Congress whose members have, by and large, stood by while he has shredded most of the Consitution we have arrived at this point. President Bush has been allowed to carry out whatever course of action he wants, be it the suspension of habeus corpus, torture, secret imprisonment, warrantless wiretapping, etc. with nothing of substance being done to stop him. Indeed, the Congress has abetted him by passing such legislation as the PATRIOT ACT, the Military Commissions Act of 2006, and the Anti-Torture Act of 2005 (which merely formalized AG Gonzales' interpretation of what constitutes torture, essentially allowing anything short of causing death). All he has had to do is to cloak himself in the flag and claim that Patriotism and a desire to "keep America safe" justify his actions. Congress is as much a part of this travesty as he is and the decision by the new Democratic leadership to "take impeachment off the table" can only have strengthened his view of the correctness of his actions. There is still some hope that our course can be reversed, but doing so will require a concerted effort by the Congress, the Courts, and the People to achieve it. Let's hope that the courts don't let us down and that they allow this suit to go forward. At least it would be a start.
Just my $.02,
Ron
Impeach Barack Obama for violating the Constitutional requirement to be a "natural born" citizen to hold the office of P
The feds argue that the case is now moot because they are now obtaining warrants from the FISA court, and furthermore President Bush did not renew the warrantless program.
So..their arugment comes down to: we are no longer committing this crime and breaking laws, so therefore you should drop all activity to prevent us from doing so in the future and making us pay the legal penalties for our lawbreaking!!! Hmmmm......is there any half-wit or twit out there or would dare argue that this is even remotely related to jurisprudence????? [Be forewarned, I am a descendant of the Dutch-American reporter who first coined the term shyster to describe corrupt politicians and lawyers. (Shyster: a nickname for individuals in NYC who went behind the horse-drawn carriages and cleaned up the horse poop.)]
An interesting mention about that horrendous FBI op against Reverent King --- as actions have consequences, since those criminal FBI types were never prosecuted (probably promoted like Frasca and Maltbie) I wonder how many other bad types they brought into the Bureau??? Traitors like Hanssen? Criminals who sold out the citizenry and were responsible for murders by supplying criminal organizations with sensitive and confidential data? Those responsible for the attempt extermination of the Weaver family at Ruby Ridge??? (No, I don't hold with such beliefs, but nor does it give certain factions within the US government the right to assassinate members of the electorate.)
And did those bad FBI types eventually bring into the Bureau those clowns who ignored all those detailed tips preceding the attacks of 9/11/01.....
I am so tired of the current administration running roughshod over the rights of citizens and non-citizens alike. The Executive Branch seems at every turn to believe that the law and indeed even the constitution do not apply to them! I suspect that if we were to harness the energy of Jefferson, Franklin, and the other signers of the constitution spinning in their graves we could once and for all solve the energy crisis!
I've noticed that recently this seems to have stopped being a Republican/Democrat thing and seems to have become an Executive Branch vs. Congress sort of thing. Dozens of Republican congressmen are now speaking critically of our president and his cabinet publicly. While I think this is a very good thing, I think it may be too little too late. So much damage has already been done. Laws like the Patriot Act have already been passed and implemented and our President has too much power and momentum going his way.
We have secret prisons and our citizens (and non-citizens alike) can be tried in secret courts. Hell, we don't even have to try them according to the Justice Department, Habeas Corpus is actually not a constitutional right!
Don't forget that our president was elected based on a highly questionable election in 2000. Many people called it a bloodless coup! I have no explanation on how he was re-elected in 2004 and frankly, I fear that the power structure is already in place to make the 2008 election another sham. I suspect that the people that control this administration will stop at nothing to remain in control.
The president and his cronies lied to us about the threat that Iraq represented and they dragged us into an illegal war that has killed thousands of people and maimed tens of thousands more. He sent our troops into battle without adequate protection and recently ordered even more in to Iraq despite the fact that we no longer have much of a reason to be there.
Our president is out-of-touch with the citizenry, he is not listening to congress or even to logic. He and his administration are operating not according to law but rather as they wish. The executive branch while part of a democracy is not functioning as if it is a component of a democratic nation but rather as if it were a dictatorship.
I think we need to place our hope in the third triad of our government, the one that is least democratic (it is not elected and its members are appointed for life). We must rely on the Judicial Branch to make the right decisions to keep democracy intact. Court cases like this one, and the one testing Habeas Corpus, are quite literally a test of the mettle of our country. Sadly, we have a (politically) "conservative" court, the majority of which were appointed by Republicans, the same people who are in control of our Executive Branch.
I am worried about what America is letting itself become. I don't think that our
leadership in the Executive Branch any longer has any interest in representing "we the people" and I worry that we may be too late to restore our country to what it was.