Just out, a Federal judge tells the Shrubbery to cut the crap with his illegal wiretaps: NSA eavesdropping program ruled unconstitutional
U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor in Detroit became the first judge to strike down the National Security Agency’s program, which she says violates the rights to free speech and privacy.
The ruling [warning PDF] tells Gonzalez that he has to put up or shut up on the legality of the program.
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3 comments
Hopefully, she won’t be the last one to do so
As I read what she said, there was never any question that what was claimed was not Constitutional, but the fact that they admitted what they were doing is the key.
If no one in the government had defended the program; if they all refused to talk about it; the judge would have been hard pressed to go forward with the case. The fact that the arrogant SOBs admitted what they were doing meant they couldn’t claim the program was secret.
That’s the best news I had all day yesterday. The wingers are of course going after the judge, who is a Carter appointee. (And, as if that were not offensive enough to GOPers, she’s Black. And twice married. To known Democrats.) But as I understand it (admittedly secondhand), she based her opinion in part on that of a judge who is a Bush 41 appointee. That won’t stop Rush Limbaugh, of course.
I’d say these people are like children whining when they didn’t get their way, but perhaps they have no choice. As the old saying has it, when you have neither the facts nor the law, pound the table, and ad hominem attacks (ad feminam in this case) are a form of pounding the table.
File this under “why I belong to the ACLU.” However this comes out on appeal, I may give them a bonus contribution this year.