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Supreme Court Won't Hear ACLU Wiretap Case
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "The US Supreme Court refused without comment the ACLU's appeal of a lower court ruling that prevented them from suing over the government's warrantless TSP program. The problem was a Catch-22: they lack legal 'standing' to sue over it because they can't prove that they were suspected terrorists, but neither can they find out who was actually suspected, because this is a matter of national security." Update: 02/20 00:17 GMT by KD : Removed an incorrect statement after a reader pointed out that, with the expiration of the Protect America Act this weekend, foreign surveillance will revert to oversight by the FISA court.
If you can sue us, we'll let you know, unless we consider that to be a secret.
Something about how no charges shall issue except on a warrant or something like that?
Wasn't one of the bits in the declaration of independence criticizing King George III about secret trials?
Bit sad, really, that it's coming to this.
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree
And an independent media (e.g. James Risen at the New York Times) to publish some lists of people who have been illegally wire-tapped. Or maybe some technician who works for a major communications network can upload the list of names/numbers they've been tasked to set up monitors on.
The Slashdot posters make.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
It is interesting to see what the Supreme Court has ruled upon or refused to advise upon from the past... whether the subject was slavery or other free rights... they constantly get it wrong. Example:
."
In March of 1857, the United States Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, declared that all blacks -- slaves as well as free -- were not and could never become citizens of the United States. The court also declared the 1820 Missouri Compromise unconstitutional, thus permiting slavery in all of the country's territories.
The case before the court was that of Dred Scott v. Sanford. Dred Scott, a slave who had lived in the free state of Illinois and the free territory of Wisconsin before moving back to the slave state of Missouri, had appealed to the Supreme Court in hopes of being granted his freedom.
Taney -- a staunch supporter of slavery and intent on protecting southerners from northern aggression -- wrote in the Court's majority opinion that, because Scott was black, he was not a citizen and therefore had no right to sue. The framers of the Constitution, he wrote, believed that blacks "had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit. He was bought and sold and treated as an ordinary article of merchandise and traffic, whenever profit could be made by it."
Referring to the language in the Declaration of Independence that includes the phrase, "all men are created equal," Taney reasoned that "it is too clear for dispute, that the enslaved African race were not intended to be included, and formed no part of the people who framed and adopted this declaration. . .
props to PBS
This is the same Catch-22...
And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make
Well?
Well what?
You're listening to my phone calls and it's not a secret.
I told you, you're not allowed to sue me unless you know my secret.
But I do!
No you don't.
I DO!
No you don't.
Look, I don't want you spying on me.
Well, that's a secret.
Aha. If it's a secret, I must be a terrorist, so it's not a secret anymore! I got you!
No you haven't.
Yes I have. If it's an official government secret that you're spying on me, I must be a terrorist.
Not necessarily. I could be listening to your phone calls in my spare time.
The fact that the government is let off the hook because the victims can't legally show harm - that is, they are prevented from actually knowing if their privacy is invaded - is quite disturbing. A child pornographer could use the same argument; that because his children (err, victims...) aren't old enough to understand the harm done to them, that they have no grounds for objecting to their pictures being taken.
I think, though, that there's a double standard when it comes to government. Unlike "terrorists" - which are presumed guilty except when there exists incontrovertible exculpatory evidece - the government is presumed innocent, and its evidence and intentions beyond reproach, except when the accused manage, by some legal loophole, to show otherwise.
Justice at the federal level has completely changed:
"If you aren't doing anything wrong, what do you have to hide?"
Indeed, all patriotic Americans need to ask themselves this question of the government, particularly the executive branch. If indeed, they aren't doing anything wrong, why must they keep everything so secret - even from Congress and the Courts? Isn't it more likely that they are using the secrecy to cover up activities that most Americans would consider wrong?
Most worrisome is the fact that we have gone from an open society which feared nothing ("The only thing we have to fear is fear itself...") to a society where everyone is suspect and fear of what one might do is sufficient to deny anyone and everyone their rights under the law. The justice system has been transformed from an open and transparent process which followed the principles of fairness to a capricious and arbitrary exercise of power.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
...is over in the US. One basic principle of it is that the law applies to everyone equally, that nobody is "above the law". There can be exceptions and special priviledges as long as they are written into the laws. So in most countries MPs are exempt from prosecution, for good reasons, and that's ok because it's part of the process.
In the US, the rule of law has been abandoned. You are back to the rule of power: Everyone does whatever he can get away with. Your so-called president leading the way.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
It takes 4 justices to grant certiorari to a case, except in certain capital punishment circumstances. http://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/index.php/Certiorari Therefore, we know that at most 3 justices were interested in hearing the case. None of them felt strongly enough about this to write a dissent from the denial of a grant of certiorari. That has happened in the anti-terrorism context, with Justice Breyer writing and Souter and Ginsburg joining. URL:www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/06pdf/06-1195Breyer.pdf>. President Bush has appointed two out of 9. A full four, enough to grant certiorari, are liberal and often at odds with the president.
Regardless of your politics, the decision of the trial court was awful.
http://althouse.blogspot.com/2006/08/shocking-decision-in-aclu-v-nsa.html This just puts an ACLU fantasy about its reach to bed.
Justice is served.
Really? You should double check the Constitution with regards to the enumerated powers (you know, what the 10th amendment discusses) of SCOTUS... in fact they are the ones (not the constitution) that declared themselves the supreme arbiter of the constitution (see Marbury v. Madison).
How you figure? The Constitution itself states that the Judicial branch shall have jurisdiction over all cases arising under the Law of the U.S. and the Constitution. Marbury v Madison was just a case where a Law passed by Congress conflicted with the Constitution -- and again, it is clear from the Constitution that in such a case, the Constitution wins. That case may have formalized the notion of "Judicial Review", but the principle itself is quite Constitutional.
Oh and by the way, the statute which the Court ruled in Marbury v Madison to be Unconstitutional was one which increased the Court's power. It's kind of hard to call this a power grab when the executed their Constitutional power to judge a case under the law in order to reject an Unconstitutional increase in power.
see cases of how they have ignored the 10th amendment
True enough, everyone pretty much ignores the 9th and 10th. But it's worth pointing out that they ignore this ammendment by not finding a law passed by Congress to be in conflict with the 10th, and thus Unconstitutional. How exactly would they do this if not via Judicial Review as established via Marbury v Madison?
In other words this is a case of the Judicial Branch abusing their powers by under-utilizing them, resulting in an increase in power of the other two branches.
The enemies of Democracy are
Note, of course, that the "general welfare" clause was not intended to permit unrestrained growth of government services for whatever vaguely-collective reason Congresspeople might concoct in the service's defense. The "general welfare" clause was not intended to permit galloping socialism.
At least, that's true according to James Madison in Federalist 41. Alexander Hamilton, OTOH, took the broader view that Congress may spend as it sees fit, so long as it doesn't favor a particular party.
Of course, even according to Hamilton's relatively-leftist, pro-government position, expenses to pay for, say, private military contractors, farm subsidies (which mostly go to the largest 20% of farms, often owned by e.g. Tyson Foods), welfare checks for the poor, (benefiting a subset of the population is not necessarily a benefit to the whole population. This doesn't make welfare a bad idea (though its implementations thus-far have ranged from moderately-useful at best (e.g. the EITC), and idiotic at worst) - merely, it conflicts with the way the U.S. Constitution both stands and as was intended by its authors), etc. would, I suspect, be invalid reasons for government spending.
Luckily for American Congresspeople, the majority of the American public has neither read the Constitution or Bill of Rights, nor has been asked to think hard about those documents -- we can thank the public education that the Dept. of Education tries to manage -- and the 20% or so who might have given them more than a passing thought tend neither to abide by those documents nor care about their intent. Combined with incentives to ignore the meaning of the highest law of the land, Congresspeople thus trample the documents they are supposed to uphold...
Is Capitalism Good for the Poor?