As Predicted, Bush Claims NSA Case Moot

[Unabogie]

It seems they have not really stopped breaking the FISA law, but instead got one of the judges to write some sort of blanket warrant. Whether that's true or not, they are now, as predicted, claiming that the case is moot.

A lawsuit challenging the legality of the National Security Agency's warrantless surveillance program should be thrown out because the government is now conducting the wiretaps under the authority of a secret intelligence court, according to court papers filed by the Justice Department yesterday.
In a filing with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit, in Cincinnati, Justice Department lawyers said the lawsuit of the American Civil Liberties Union and other plaintiffs -- which received a favorable ruling from a federal judge in Detroit -- should be considered moot because the case "no longer has any live significance."

Just more of the same pattern. If they were not really violating FISA, why are they so loathe to prove that in court?

The new lines of argument in the ACLU case come less than a week before a hearing scheduled for next Wednesday in Cincinnati where both sides are set to offer oral arguments.

 

[davefoc]

I see a few possibilities here:

1. The administration genuinely feels that maintaining the secrecy of their program warrants all legal risks to do it with as little oversight as possible.

2. The administration genuinely feels that implementing some aspect of the program would not win congressional or court approval and that it is so important a program that all legal risks are justified to maintain it.

3. Keeping its details hidden is part of their strategy for dodging the legal or political consequences of their illegal or embarrassing activity. One possibility is that the program is not of any significant value and the administration would like for people to not know that so they have pursued a program that produced no benefits.

4. The administration is on some sort of ego trip (probably Cheney driven) to push the limits of the executive branch without having to be subject to anybody's oversight.

5. The administration is trying to set up programs to assist it with gaining information that would be useful to them for political or other purposes.

I listed the possibilities in the order of my guess at their likelihood. The problem I see with this stuff is not so much what these guys want to do with the information from the program (although that scares me a little), but rather what happens as each administration that follows expands it a little and it eventually becomes a little gold mine of technology to be used against political enemies. Bushco seems to have shown little understanding of the basic concept of checks and balances and the threat that the elimination of those checks and balances would have to our country as we know it with its . But perhaps they have and the program has good safeguards of domestic privacy and yet is still effective enough to justify the risks, expenses and the administration's avoidance of normal oversight by either the congress or the courts. I don't know.

 

[Unabogie]

I see a few possibilities here:

1. The administration genuinely feels that maintaining the secrecy of their program warrants all legal risks to do it with as little oversight as possible.

2. The administration genuinely feels that implementing some aspect of the program would not win congressional or court approval and that it is so important a program that all legal risks are justified to maintain it.

3. Keeping its details hidden is part of their strategy for dodging the legal or political consequences of their illegal or embarrassing activity. One possibility is that the program is not of any significant value and the administration would like for people to not know that so they have pursued a program that produced no benefits.

4. The administration is on some sort of ego trip (probably Cheney driven) to push the limits of the executive branch without having to be subject to anybody's oversight.

5. The administration is trying to set up programs to assist it with gaining information that would be useful to them for political or other purposes.

I listed the possibilities in the order of my guess at their likelihood. The problem I see with this stuff is not so much what these guys want to do with the information from the program (although that scares me a little), but rather what happens as each administration that follows expands it a little and it eventually becomes a little gold mine of technology to be used against political enemies. Bushco seems to have shown little understanding of the basic concept of checks and balances and the threat that the elimination of those checks and balances would have to our country as we know it with its . But perhaps they have and the program has good safeguards of domestic privacy and yet is still effective enough to justify the risks, expenses and the administration's avoidance of normal oversight by either the congress or the courts. I don't know.

Yeah, I think it's entirely possible that this is simply an exercise in Cheney's theories on executive power and that they are not misusing the power they arrogated to themselves on this. However, they claim they have legal backing to this. Furthermore, they spent about a week slamming Anna Diggs Taylor as issuing the judicial equivalent of "How I Spent my Summer" consisting of nothing more than "I had fun."

Anyone who knows what legal analysis and legal argument look like -- anyone who knows the requisites of legal reasoning -- must look on the handiwork of Judge Anna Diggs Taylor in the NSA case in amazement. It is a pathetic piece of work. If it had been submitted by a student in my second year legal writing class at the University of St. Thomas Law School, it would have earned a failing grade.

One would think that such a weak and obviously flawed ruling would be just what Cheney would like in this case. A chance to easily set precedent that he could use to bootstrap other like programs, using this case as his buttress. And defending the case wouldn't require any release of classified details about the TSP.