Slashdot Mirror
Congress Tries To Strip Power From Anti-Wiretap Judge
palegray.net writes "Congress is attempting to strip US District Chief Judge Vaughn Walker of his power following his ruling against the government regarding immunity for telecoms in the NSA wiretapping case. Walker was appointed to the bench by President Bush, and has attempted to enforce existing prohibitions against warrantless wiretapping. From the Wired article: 'Walker, the chief judge of the Northern District of California, affirmed that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is the exclusive legal method for conducting surveillance inside the United States against suspected spies and [terrorists]. The Bush Administration argues that Congress's vote to authorize military force against Al Qaeda and the president's inherent war time powers were exceptions to the exclusivity provision.' The article makes the observation that Congress seems to be having difficulties bringing itself to enforce the laws that it has previously passed regarding wiretapping, and seems more interesting in silencing opposing viewpoints."
Update: 07/06 16:15 GMT by SS: As several readers have noted, the vote would only limit Judge Walker with respect to this particular case. His other responsibilities would be unaffected.
You Americans should probably try to e-mail your senator or member of congress regarding this. Mr. Walker seems to be one of the good guys, I'd hate to see him go down.
In what I am given to understand is a grand, old Slashdot tradition, the article summary (and title of the summary) bear little, if any, resemblance to the "fine" article. Neither Congress nor the Executive branch is attempting to "strip power" from this or any other judge. They are (foolishly, IMO) retroactively legalizing a series of illegal acts, and making moot a case or series of cases currently pending on said judge's schedule, but the judge's authority is not one whit affected by the proposed law.
Shame on Soulskill and Palegray for this false-faced spin-doctoring.
And yes, reading TFA and actually expecting the summary to at least remotely resemble the article is evidently proof that I'm new here.
If you haven't been down-modded lately, you aren't trying.
Sacred cows make the best hamburger.
Lee Iacocca in his autobiography stated that people are more interested in reading headlines rather than content or Opinion.
Before any of you slashdotters start venting foam from your mouths, let us be clear on content:
1. The Congress is NOT trying to strip THIS judge from power to do anything.
2. The Congress/Senate votes on July 8th to provide immunity to Telecoms who allegedly violated law.
3. If such immunity is provided, then, and only then will this judge lose his power to apply the law to Telecoms on spying.
If the vote stalls, (any senator can bring in a "Hold") the judge can proceed on existing laws and there is absolutely NOTHING the Congress or president can do to stop him, short of impeaching him (which will invite the wrath of even Scalia and probably result in arrest of President).
The title is wrong, misleading and similar to what FOX news or Karl Rove would have done.
Shame on you s'dotters, i thought you were more intelligent and accurate than FOX News.
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
The title of the case was "AL-HARAMAIN ISLAMIC FOUNDATION vs GEORGE BUSH, [et al]". So you are correct. Although, to be fair many cases involving the executive branch are titled "United States vs blank", so the press gets in the habit of describing the executive branch as "the government". And I believe it is a internationally widespread custom to describe the administration as "the government".
He doesn't feed people feet first into plastic shredders.
Instead, he authorizes war and they're blown up, crushed, finished off by treatable diseases, or flee their homes to live in squalor in refugee camps. He only presided the capture of 80,000 suspected terrorists, and only 150 have officially died in custody.
He doesn't use chemical weapons against citizens of his country.
The same members of his current administration authorized the sale of those weapons knowing full well what they'd be used for.
He doesn't have women raped and children tortured in front of their parents.
The lawyer (John Yoo) in charge of formally defining torture said that crushing a child's testicles or raping an infant shouldn't be illegal when trying to extract information from terrorists. They haven't, to public knowledge, done that yet, but they think they should be able to.
He's going to be out of office via the normal process come next January.
Hopefully he won't start a war with Iran before he's finally removed from power, whether directly or through our client state, Israel.
That list goes on and on as well, but to compare him to Saddam is disingenuous at best.
No. Our government supported Saddam Hussein, with money and weapons, during the worst of his atrocities when his father was vice president. The same group of people oversaw the war in the gulf, and returned for round three to complete the destruction of Iraqi society in order to establish control over the resources of that area.
When virtually the same administration supports a tyrant and then accuses him of being a tyrant as an excuse to decimate an entire country, there's no reason not to make the comparison. Were it not for American support of Saddam in the 80s, the Shah from 1953 to 1979, and our continuing support of Saudi Arabia, there may have been freedom in the middle east long ago.
Saddam simply did our dirty work for us, namely, suppressing the Shia minority and keeping Iran in check and Saudi Arabia less worried about an uprising in their own state. Now we're employing the same tactics in Baghdad for the surge, where one hundred thousand mercenaries, including Sunnis no longer allied with al Qaeda, have been given free reign to "establish order."
And in continuing the discussion of the checks and balances of our government, I offer this:
"The article makes the observation that Congress seems to be having difficulties bringing itself to enforce the laws that it has previously passed..."
The Legislative branch does not enforce law, they write law. The Executive enforces law. The Judicial Interprets law.
Ramen
To complete this pattern you should read A People's History of the United States. Here's a sample from page 238 at Google Books:
Zinn continues on to describe a Homestead Act that allowed people with means to buy up land in the west for a low price (if you had means), and the government's gift of tens of millions of acres of public land to railroads.
Apparently giving business interests what they want is no longer enough, or the people in power need more power to deliver on the promise of all that lobbyist money. The quotation names the Republican party but I think it's well agreed these days that both major parties are equally likely to be owned by lobbies.
When the axe came to the forest, the trees said, "Look out - the handle was once one of us."
We're at war and Bush is trying to win it.
When did Congress declare that war? We are not "At War", we are in a NATO action in one area, and a UN action in another, but we are not at war.
This is definitely the most inaccurate headline I've ever seen at Slashdot. The trying-to-save-face Update is also droolingly inaccurate. Others have tried to say it, but I'll reiterate it in different words here:
THE WIRED ARTICLE IS USING THE PHRASE "STRIP HIS POWER" SOLELY AS A METAPHOR.
Congress is not voting on Judge Vaughn Walker in any way, shape, or form. His name doesn't appear in any bill, law, or motion in front of Congress. He just *happens* to be the judge that the warrantless wiretapping suits are in front of in the Northern District of California.
Yes, on Tuesday Congress plans to vote on the intercom wiretapping immunity bill (and it stinks like rotten fish), like they've been planning for some time. And yes, that would mean that the judge then couldn't rule in favor of this lawsuit. But they're not targetting any particular individual, and this is just the exact same story we've been reading about for months now regarding an intercom-immunity bill.
Congress is NOT stripping Judge Walker of any power whatsoever. Congress IS passing a new crappy law that coincidentally affects one of the cases in front of Judge Walker.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
This war powers reasoning irritates the hell out of me. I don't deny that it may be necessary to expand the President's powers when we are at war, but I do think we should first require that our country actually formally DECLARE WAR on the other country before this can be invoked. And by "declare war" I mean our Congress pass a resolution stating explicitly that we "Declare War" on the enemy country.
Sorry, there's no such foolish regulation in the Constitution. Any act of Congress authorizing use of military force is a declaration of war. If you're so inclined, you can go find the full text of the bills that authorized action in Afghanistan and Iraq.
And if we're going to put a formal declaration in the Constitution, for the love of God, add in a "undeclare" war clause, without need of the President's consent, as well.
Bush can NOT exercise wartime powers. Or rather, he should not be able to exercise wartime powers. War requires a declaration by Congress. Military action at the behest of the President is not war, regardless of how it's spun. If the President is able to single-handedly declare war, then use his own declaration as reason to dismiss traditional Executive restraint, the whole goddam Constitution is worthless.
Yes, I'm well aware that this is essentially what's been going on for the last 8 years. It's been drawn out enough to make it less extreme. Just a signing statement here, an executive order there. Of course, until Congress realizes that it's own power has been hijacked by the Executive, there's really not much that can be done.
Regardless, it really is nice to see the Judiciary stepping up lately. Hopefully some of our elected leaders get the message.
That's a tired old saying. You must not be paying attention.
The Supreme court already ruled on that and determined or should I say confirmed that we are at war. It was in the Hamdi v rumsfield case I believe. Congress doesn't have to say "we declare war" in order to take us to war. Make no mistake, we are at war and not in an action.
Such as, the FISA process is slow, and actionable intelligence might require real-time speed. What if bin Laden is on the phone right now, with a throw-away cell? By the time you can get a FISA warrant, he's hung up and thrown the phone away. Opportunity lost.
Considering that you can apply for a FISA warrant retroactively, I don't see how it can ever be called "slow". Time-traveling warrants are never late.