Posted on 01/17/2006 2:59:09 AM PST by summer
Two leading civil rights groups plan to file lawsuits Tuesday against the Bush administration over its domestic spying program....
The Center for Constitutional Rights plans to sue on behalf of four lawyers at the center and a legal assistant there who work on terrorism-related cases at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba,... Similarly, the plaintiffs in the A.C.L.U. lawsuit include five Americans who work in international policy and terrorism, along with the A.C.L.U. and three other groups....
One of the A.C.L.U. plaintiffs, Larry Diamond, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute, ...
Also named as plaintiffs in the A.C.L.U. lawsuit are the journalist Christopher Hitchens, who has written in support of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; Barnett R. Rubin, a scholar at New York University who works in international relations; Tara McKelvey, a senior editor at The American Prospect; the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers; Greenpeace, the environmental advocacy group; and the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the country's largest Islamic advocacy group....
Bill Goodman, legal director for the Center for Constitutional Rights, said that in suing in federal court to block the surveillance program, his group believed "without question" that Mr. Bush violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which governs wiretaps, by authorizing the security agency operation.
But Mr. Goodman acknowledged that in persuading a federal judge to intervene, "politically, it's a difficult case to make."
He added: "We recognize that it's extremely difficult for a court to stand up to a president, particularly a president who is determined to extend his power beyond anything envisioned by the founding fathers. That takes courage."
The debate over the legality of Mr. Bush's eavesdropping program will be at the center of Congressional hearings expected to begin next month....
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Bingo.
Bolshevik Theater American Style
hmmmmmmm.............
Complaints of wiretapping from MSM journalists who were having overseas phone calls with terrorists.
What's the problem?
"However, because of the President's constitutional duty to act for the United States in the field of foreign relations, and his inherent power to protect national security in the context of foreign affairs, we reaffirm what we held in United States v. Clay, supra, that the President may constitutionally authorize warrantless wiretaps for the purpose of gathering foreign intelligence."
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"We agree with the district court that the Executive Branch need not always obtain a warrant for foreign intelligence surveillance."
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"Prior to the enactment of FISA, virtually every court that had addressed the issue had concluded that the President had the inherent power to conduct warrantless electronic surveillance to collect foreign intelligence information, and that such surveillances constituted an exception to the warrant requirement of the Fourth Amendment."
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"The Truong court, as did all the other courts to have decided the issue, held that the President did have inherent [constitutional] authority to conduct warrantless searches to obtain foreign intelligence information."
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"We take for granted that the President does have that authority and, assuming that is so, FISA could not encroach on the President’s constitutional power."
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Well, it's hardly the first time the courts have been egregiously wrong! ;^)
Seriously, I think my analysis is considerably more consistent with Congress' Article I authority over the military than the sort of Presidential/Congressional split authority these cites reflect.
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