CINCINNATI ”Â
A federal appeals court on Friday ordered the dismissal of a lawsuit challenging President Bush’s domestic spying program, saying the plaintiffs had no standing to sue.
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The 2-1 ruling by the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel vacated a 2006 order by a lower court in Detroit, which had found the post-Sept. 11 warrantless surveillance aimed at uncovering terrorist activity to be unconstitutional, violating rights to privacy and free speech and the separation of powers.
Judge Julia Smith Gibbons, one of the two Republican appointees who ruled against the plaintiffs, said they failed to show they were subject to the surveillance and therefore do not have standing for their claims.
Ronald Lee Gilman, a Democratic appointee, disagreed, saying he felt the plaintiffs were within their rights to sue and that it was clear to him that the surveillance program violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978.
Although the Bush administration said in January the program is now overseen by a special federal intelligence court, opponents said that without a court order, the president could resume the spying outside judicial authority at any time. The government said the case had become moot.
The American Civil Liberties Union led the suit on behalf of other groups including lawyers, journalists and scholars it says have been handicapped in doing their jobs by the government monitoring.
Others have filed court challenges to the program; this case proceeded the furthest.
The decision “insulates the Bush administration’s warrantless surveillance activities from judicial review and deprives Americans of any ability to challenge the illegal surveillance of their telephone calls and e-mails,” ACLU Legal Director Steven R. Shapiro said in a news release.
What will Jack Cafferty and his ilk have to say now?
Yay!
Good nwes from the heartland!
Damn, my post is missing again.
The ACLU ought to move to their paradise of Zimbabwe.
The 2 who are W. Bush appointees out of the 3 on the court rules against the lower court decision. Monarchy rules the USA now. Why did we even bother fighting the against King George the III?
Tofu,
Face facts, you nuts lost elections. The adults are in charge.
#3: ACLU = Anti-American Communist Liberals United.
Bush’s Court appointees, especially those on the SCOTUS, will be his most positive enduring legacy. It is an area where you have to give the man credit that he did a great job on.
Republican = anything we don’t like can only be communist and since we hate communism more than anything else, what we don’t like is bad. Ok, I’m not as poetic as you guys, but I’m trying! :d
Well folks, the courts got this one right on a lot of levels. The first is that the ACLU doesn’t have standing because they weren’t being monitored. Secondly, without the ability to prove harm was done to the individuals involved, there isn’t any standing for a suit. Thirdly, who wants to be the judge who opines that monotoring an international call that resulted in a terrorist attack being stopped was unconstitutional and therefore the terrorists must be set free and any future communications that they make to other terrorists may not be monitored? The ONLY way in which this case could realistically be argued as to causing anyone any real harm would be to defend a terrorist who’s plot was disrupted by it. Can you imagine that argument in court?
ACLU: Your Honor the defense requests that all charges be dismissed against my client on the grounds that the information leading to his arrest was obtained through the use of warrantless wiring tapping. Based on that illegally obtained information, he was placed under surveillance. Because the surveillance was initiated based on information received from a warrantless wiretap, barring dismissal of all charges, we move to have the Ryder truck full of explosives, the crate of AK-47s, the cases of ammunition, and the 2 dozen RPGs be ruled as inadmissable evidence as fruit of the forbidden tree.
At this point in time, the only real question is: Is the court in the 9th circuit? If not, motions would be denied and the terrorist remanded to custody. If so, the terrorist is released, the weapons returned, and the US government sued for multiple milions for violating his right to commit mass murder.