Free Republic

SAN FRANCISCO - The Bush administration appealed a court decision Monday that allowed a lawsuit to go forward challenging the president's warrantless domestic spying program. In rejecting government claims that the suit could expose state secrets and jeopardize the war on terror, U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker ruled July 20 that the eavesdropping was so widely reported there appears to be no danger of spilling secrets. The case, which names AT&T Inc. as a defendant, is among three dozen lawsuits alleging telecommunications companies and the government are illegally intercepting communications without warrants. Walker is the only judge to rule against...

PEARL HARBOR -- The Navy asked a federal appeals court Wednesday to block a court order that prevents it from using sonar during its war-game exercises off Hawaii, an environmental group said. The emergency motion, filed in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, seeks a stay on an order stopping the Navy from using the high-intensity sonar, said Daniel Hinerfeld, spokesman for the National Resources Defense Council. The Navy was forced to abandon plans to use mid-frequency active sonar during the international maritime exercises after a federal judge issued the order. Environmentalists had sued, claiming the...

A National Security Agency program that listens in on international communications involving people in the United States is both vital to national security and permitted by the Constitution, a government lawyer told a judge here today in the first major court argument on the program. But, the lawyer went on, addressing Judge Anna Diggs Taylor of the Federal District Court, "the evidence we need to demonstrate to you that it lawful cannot be disclosed without that process itself causing grave harm to United States national security." The only solution to this impasse, the lawyer, Anthony J. Coppolino, said, was for...