Courts Side With NSA On Wiretaps

[sabra]

http://www.nysun.com/article/45686

Courts Side With NSA On Wiretaps

Defense lawyers who had hoped that the public disclosure a year ago of the National Security Agency's wiretapping program would yield information favorable to their clients are being rebuffed by the federal judiciary, which in a series of unusually consistent rulings has rejected efforts by terrorism suspects to access the records.

In at least 17 criminal cases, federal district judges nominated to the federal bench by presidents Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Clinton, and George W. Bush have ruled against requests to force the government to tell defendants, most accused of terrorism-related crimes, whether the NSA eavesdropped on them without a court warrant.

The rulings indicate that even as public support for the war in Iraq has eroded in polls and as the NSA program has come under criticism from congressional Democrats, and even some Republicans, federal judges may be a bulwark that the Bush administration can rely on to defer to at least some aspects of its wartime policies.

The judges' decisions have come after defense attorneys filed motions requesting access to relevant surveillance intercepts that the government obtained without a warrant. Defense attorneys claim they are entitled to such information and that evidence obtained from warrantless wiretaps is tainted and inadmissible at trial. In many, but not all instances, the motions were filed after a conviction.

[IndianaGreen]

1. It's all of those Federalist Society judges that all of those Presidents appointed

including Big Dog.

[tritsofme]

2. Clinton didn't exactly make a habit

out of appointing judges from the Federalist Society.

If you can find any, I bet you could count them on one hand.

[w4rma]

3. I hope it's a matter of Clinton having to run his judicial picks past a beligerant GOP Congress

rather than Clinton's, seemingly, authoritarian choices for judgeships.

[rodeodance]

4. this is not good for our democracy

[Straight Shooter]

7. What democracy?

Oh, you must mean the sham democracy, the one that barely resembles what the Founding Fathers intended. Yeah, that democracy.

[toopers]

8. Our founding fathers didn't intend for our government . . .

to be a democracy.

[Straight Shooter]

9. My bad.

They intended for it to be a fascist government.

:sarcasm:

[OKIsItJustMe]

10. The term they used was "Republican"

http://www.archives.gov/national-archives-experience/charters/constitution_transcript.html#4.4.1

The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, ...

The question you have to ask is, "What did they mean by 'Republican?'"

The "Republican" Form of Government guaranteed by the Constitution is often referred to as a "Republican Democracy" or as a "Representative Democracy" more commonly referred to simply as a "Democracy."

[toopers]

12. Or a representative republic . . .

[YankeyMCC]

5. Disapointing to say the least nt

[Joanne98]

6. Activist judges won't follow the constitution....

[The Witch]

11. To be fair, it sounds as though these were peripheral to the cases at hand.

These were not judges deciding that the NSA surveillance program is totally ok. They were cases in which records were sought in terorrism suspects' trials. So it's not like the courts have completely abandoned us.

That said, it still sucks.