Spy Court Judge Quits In Protest
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in The War On TerrorismLooks like the wiretapping story has legs…
Now, a little background about what I’ve heard on wiretaps…when the government has gone to the courts to request them, those requests have only been denied several times in the last 30 years. So its not surprising that Bush’s actions have pushed people like U.S. District Judge James Robertson over the edge.
From the Washington Post:
Two associates familiar with his decision said yesterday that Robertson privately expressed deep concern that the warrantless surveillance program authorized by the president in 2001 was legally questionable and may have tainted the FISA court’s work.Robertson, who was appointed to the federal bench in Washington by President Bill Clinton in 1994 and was later selected by then-Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist to serve on the FISA court, declined to comment when reached at his office late yesterday.
And just to be clear, regardless of what many are saying about the usefullness of wiretapping, the concerns of any President having absolute power is a bi-partisan issue:
Word of Robertson’s resignation came as two Senate Republicans joined the call for congressional investigations into the National Security Agency’s warrantless interception of telephone calls and e-mails to overseas locations by U.S. citizens suspected of links to terrorist groups. They questioned the legality of the operation and the extent to which the White House kept Congress informed.Sens. Chuck Hagel (Neb.) and Olympia J. Snowe (Maine) echoed concerns raised by Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who has promised hearings in the new year.
Hagel and Snowe joined Democrats Dianne Feinstein (Calif.), Carl M. Levin (Mich.) and Ron Wyden (Ore.) in calling for a joint investigation by the Senate judiciary and intelligence panels into the classified program.
It’s been fairly disheartening to read the blogosphere take partisan sides on this issue. People, this isn’t a partisan issue, and it’s not about Bush. This is about how we define freedom and why some are willing to give up the right to a life free of intense government scrutiny because they simply want the illusion of being safe. Nobody knows if these wiretaps made us safer, but I can almost guarantee you that wiretaps that monitored groups like PETA and other peace and civil rights activists bore no fruit in the War On Terrorism.
And that’s what’s at issue here, because where will it all stop? How far will we go in the name of protecting our nation? It seems some say “all the way”, but then what kind of nation are we protecting? Are we then still the beacon of freedom, or do those thousand points of light start to dim?
This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 21st, 2005 and is filed under The War On Terrorism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
December 21st, 2005 at 10:59 am
I’m interested in seeing the documentation on the wiretaps of PETA.
Most of this I chalk up to people not really having paid attention to what goes on before, so they think there is something new here, when there isn’t.
December 21st, 2005 at 2:09 pm
Justin wrote:
As I mentioned in a rather lengthy comment to Justin’s “On Wire Taps, Freedom and Order” entry, in the end the American public will set, and re-set, its own standards on what freedom means and what its value is, and (presumably) vote according to how well the various branches of government meet those standards. (What I didn’t point out, and probably should have, is that this process is nothing new; it has been going on since the beginning of the Union.)
Of course, since President Bush will not be running for re-election again, he has nothing to directly gain or lose with voters over this domestic surveillance program. That leaves only impeachment for him to really fear – and, predictably, the far Left has (not for the first time) begun clamoring for precisely that. If, however, this surveillance is ultimately found by the courts to be unconstitutional, then it amounts to a breach of the President’s oath of office to uphold the Constitution, which would suddenly give this impeachment talk new and real life.
Indeed, the resulting debate over an impeachment of President Bush under these circumstances would likely tell us all we need to know about the prevailing American attitudes toward liberty vs. security. If the American people prove to be disinclined toward impeaching a President even after he’s been shown to have broken his oath of office, just because they believe he did so for a noble purpose, then our fears about the long-term erosion of freedom in America may well be confirmed.
December 21st, 2005 at 2:16 pm
D’oh! I only put bold tags on that one sentence about impeachment, not the two paragraphs above it, but somehow they got boldened too. (Does blockquoting now automatically come with bold type on WordPress?)
December 21st, 2005 at 4:23 pm
Joshua, having been bitten by rampant italics, I can relate. A preview function would be very nice.
As for the judge, he didn’t quit his job as a federal judge, just his position on the court. I’m suspicious of his motivations, but he may have truly made a purely moral decision and didn’t consider what political ramifications his largely symbolic action would have.