:: NEWS COCKTAIL aka BlahBlahBlog ::
"Everything is being compressed into tiny tablets. You take a little pill of news every day - 23 minutes - and that's supposed to be enough." -Walter Cronkite, RE TV news. The Web has changed that for many, however, and here is an extra dose for your daily news cocktail. This prescription tends to include surveillance and now war-related links, along with the occasional pop culture junk and whatever else seizes my attention as I scan online news sites.:: 8.17.2006 ::
:: "Judge strikes down the warrantless eavesdropping program" ::
From The San Jose Mercury News
By Ron Hutcheson and Margaret Talev
WASHINGTON - In a scathing rebuke, a federal judge ruled Thursday that the Bush administration's warrantless eavesdropping program is unconstitutional and should be shut down, but legal scholars said the administration has a good chance of reversing the decision on appeal.
"There are no hereditary kings in America and no power not created by the Constitution," U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor of Detroit said in a 43-page opinion blasting the program.
Taylor said that the program, which President Bush secretly approved after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, violated the rights of free speech and privacy and went far beyond the president's authority. Administration officials say the surveillance program targets telephone calls and e-mails between the United States and suspected terrorists overseas.
The Justice Department immediately appealed the ruling, and all the parties agreed that the Bush administration is free to keep eavesdropping without warrants pending the Sept. 7 appeals-court hearing.
While the ruling was a clear victory for Bush's critics, it didn't end the legal battle over the government's secret eavesdropping. Legal scholars said the administration had a good chance of winning its appeal to the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati, which handles cases from Michigan, Kentucky, Ohio and Tennessee.
"This isn't the definitive word," said Bruce Fein, a Washington lawyer who agreed with Taylor's conclusions. "This is going to the 6th Circuit. If the 6th Circuit goes against the government, it's going to the Supreme Court."
Read more here.
ALSO
Anti-terror wiretaps ruled illegal
Guardian Unlimited, UK
Dan Glaister in Los Angeles
The White House's so-called war on terror was dealt a blow yesterday when a federal judge ruled that a controversial wiretapping programme, authorised by President George Bush, was unconstitutional.
"It was never the intent of the framers [of the US constitution] to give the president such unfettered control, particularly where his actions blatantly disregard the parameters clearly enumerated in the Bill of Rights," wrote Judge Anna Diggs Taylor in her decision.
The decision came in the first court challenge to the government's wiretapping programme. The ruling represented "another nail in the coffin in the Bush administration's legal strategy in the war on terror," said Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, which brought the lawsuit on behalf of journalists, scholars and lawyers.
Read more here.
AND
From Wired News:
Judge Halts NSA Snooping
Watergate Echoes in NSA Courtroom
posted by me
:: 11:12:00 PM [+] ::
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