 |
|
|
Posted on 08/19/2006 10:41:10 AM PDT by Grendel9
The August 17 decision in ACLU v. NSA declaring unconstitutional the National Security Agency’s foreign intelligence surveillance program is poorly reasoned, reckless, and easy for an appeals court to reverse. Space here limits describing even the categories, let alone the instances, of errors in Judge Anna Diggs Taylor’s opinion.
Judge Taylor states conclusions without any analysis at all. She notes, for example, the plaintiffs’ claim that the NSA program violates the Administrative Procedure Act and, 39 pages later, concludes that it does. The pages in between lack any mention, even a description, of this claim. Judge Taylor simply skipped it.
Judge Taylor cites court decisions for the opposite of what they held. Not only is her claim that the Fourth Amendment requires a warrant for every search patently false, but she cited cases affirming that the president’s constitutional authority allows him to gather foreign intelligence without prior judicial approval. Judge Taylor counted a plaintiff’s belief that something might happen to affect someone else’s behavior as a concrete “injury in fact” to the plaintiff himself. This, she said, was enough to give them legal standing to bring this lawsuit. The plaintiffs in this case, however, alleged only communication with persons connected to “terrorist organizations” while the NSA program is more narrowly limited to those connected to al Qaeda. The plaintiffs offered no evidence suggesting that the NSA monitored a single phone call or email. But that didn’t matter to Judge Taylor. For her, it was enough that monitoring might lead someone with whom the plaintiffs spoke in the Middle East not to communicate as freely. It should take more than an imagination to justify undermining a program that we have recently discovered is actually saving American lives.
Judge Taylor’s zeal to limit government power apparently does not apply to her own branch of government. In one of the most disturbing passages in her opinion, Judge Taylor declares that if she did not grant the plaintiffs standing to sue, she would not have the opportunity to strike down what she considers an illegal surveillance program. Think about that. The law requires a judge to have jurisdiction to rule. So in order to rule, she simply called the jurisdiction into existence.
Quoting a few clichés from Judge Taylor’s opinion about the president not being above the law cannot cover up these, and many other, profound flaws. I am confident that an appeals court will promptly reverse this injudicious decision.
Elections in November are gonna be something awful for the Dems... maybe then they will truly lose their marbles and be dragged out to mental hospitals.
bump
For those of you who believe this will be corrected "at the next level", don't be holding your breath. This sort of craziness is just the kind of thing that slips through the cracks, and is upheld on some technicality, as opposed to those who believe it should be struck down on Constitutional grounds.
The ruling is so plainly WRONG, even non-lawyers can detect the errors in judgment involved in arriving at this conclusion. But if the one-eyed logicians do manage to prevail, using the kinds of constructs ACLU is famous for, then the ruling takes on a life of its own.
While some judges would assert the uncontested right to end an unborn child's existence, they are absolutely paranoid that their cherished notions of legal reasoning should ever be tampered with.
Law is a strange thing. Especially when it is administered by strange people.
This is on the order of calling a dog's tail a leg, then asking how many legs a dog has.
The dog still only has four legs. Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg.
Calling the international phone traffic surveillance unConstitional doesn't make it unConstitutional. Even if you do wear a black robe.
Of course this case will be reversed on appeal. The political left doesn't care. This almost certainly won't happen until after the elections. Meanwhile, the Rats think that they can score political points with this ruling. Only I think they may be miscalculating yet again. Stay tuned.
Antiamerican-Communist-Libertine_Union.....
Antiamerican-Communist-Libertine_Union.....
Nonsense. If anything, they will reverse this opinion on a technicality such as lack of "standing." Her opinion will then have no legal force and effect. It will be seen for the left-wing judicial activism that it is.
Some in their hatred of President Bush are willing to let the country be destroyed.
|
|
|
In other words, Judge Taylor is a moron.
History has some rather notorious examples of governements placing security before rights. Do you REALLY want to go there?
This is beyond the pale and is clearly an attempt at judicial imperialism. Since it's currently the only branch of government that the leftists have a firm grip on, mainly because it is the least democratic branch of government, the dims are committed to helping this attempted coup by the bench.
I smell a constitutional crisis coming on. I'm betting even the libs on the appeals court will realize that not overturning this and not chastizing this judge could threaten their cozy state of affairs in their little corner of government. Most judges, liberal or conservative, rule not based on right or wrong, but on whether a given ruling will advance or retard the position of the judiciary. They realize that they can go to far and threaten the whole con game with exposure.
Maybe she's channeling dwarves.
LOL...or convicted, censured ex-Congressman husbands.
Its not only hatred of President Bush. Anna Diggs Taylor, John Conyers, the hip hop mayor Kwame Kilpatrick are all africanhyphenamericans. I believe that people like these are driven by their hatred for America and all of its sins, as they perceive them, for slavery and all the other injustices they perceive have been administered to their race. In other words, their actions are driven by hatred and racism.
I am frustrated that there is no real effective way to communicate to these hateful people what I feel about what they've done. As far as I'm concerned, their actions give aid and comfort to our country's enemies. The blood of our dead citizens and warriors drips off their fingers as much as it drips from the fingers of the muslim terrorists. I hold each and every one of them individually and collectively responsible for all our dead. .
The surveillance program is apparently a warrant-less, proactive investigative 'fishing' of US communications upon which criminal investigations would be initiated. To put it another way, would you have wanted Bill or Hillary Clinton to have had access to that degree of surveillance? Because once it's enacted by Republicans it will be used by liberals for their own purposes. Case in point: the FBI files of congress members.
You mean, proactive investigative 'fishing' of US-based communications with suspected foreign terrorists?
Don't worry - Bill Clinton wouldn't have bothered.
Why should he? He had the FBI files delivered to his office...
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.