Kermit needs to prove he was surveiled not sued.

seriously, get it right..

Has anyone seen of or heard from Kermit since?

mmmmmmm. . . . frog legs. . . .

Kermit is screwed.

If I had the ability to search the archives, I would be able to find my posts that predicted this outcome.

As I have tried to explain on countless occasions, because the goal of the program is not to uncover evidence that will be used in the prosecution of a criminal case against an individual in a civilian court, but to uncover information about enemy, i.e., terrorists, activities both here and abroad that will be dealt with by the military or other means, there are no constitutional objections as to how the information was obtained that would defeat the President's inherent power as Commander-In-Chief to use all means at his disposal to protect the country from attack.

Unless information gathered by this program is used against an individual in the prosecution of a crime, no one would have standing to challenge the program. The court's decision was correct.

I swing my fists in the dark, so you should have no reason to duck. I'll only hit you if you deserve it.

My creator is laughing his ass off.

Kermit needs to prove he was surveiled not sued.

Fixed.

Isn't there an Oregon case where there is evidence, because the FBI sent transcripts from illegal wiretaps to the people they were wiretapping when they meant to send some other documents.

when did "surveiled" become a verb?

Kermit needs to prove he was spied on.

Justice Scalia has been a pioneer in developing the standing requirements to bring a constitutional claim over violation of rights, and are used to keep claims out of court, regardless of their validity on the merits. This seems like another clear case of abuse of the standing requirements. A good analogy is the famous NAACP case, in which they were allowed standing to bring a claim for their members against Alabama when the state required everyone in the NAACP to divulge their identities to the state authorities. Because the NAACP members could not bring a claim to challenge this law without divulging their identities, which was the harm they sought to challenge, the NAACP was allowed to sue for all of them instead of requiring the members to sue individually. Also, the drinking age case in which a state provided a younger legal drinking age for women than for men. Coors was able to bring the constitutional sex discrimination claim on behalf of its would-be male customers, because its relationship with them was harmed by virtue of the impingement on the males' constitutional rights. Another analogy, albeit on the somewhat related issue of mootness and not on standing, is the doctrine of cases that are fleeting but capable of being repeated- suits for harm to pregant women, suits of conduct of elections, and suits over rights in divorce actions, for example, or suits in which a defendant willingly stops offending conduct but is free to resume it. Although if a situation that brought you to court ends while you are suing- say a state run hospital treats black pregnant woman worse than white as a policy, but before the suit is over the plaintiff's pregnancy and stay at the hospital is over, with no lasting damages due to the mistreatment- if the situation is capable of easy repetition (the plaintiff could easily become pregnant again, say, as long as she hasn't become sterile, and could end up as a patient in the state hospital again) the plaintiff is allowed to challenge it because otherwise the delay in litigating would prevent the claim from ever being brought.

Military guys and types like that say surveilled all the time. It's entered the language, if it hasn't entered the dictionary.

Yeah, like THIS Supreme Court is going to rule against the administration. Watch for flying pigs.

A scary world you live in, Chicounsel. Life is so short anyway. You sure you want to spend all your brief span there?

You know, you can live with commonsensical precautions without all the quivering at shadows.

You favor measures with huge costs that at the very most make you marginally safer; I thought this sort of thinking was antithecal to conservatives.

there are no constitutional objections as to how the information was obtained that would defeat the President's inherent power as Commander-In-Chief to use all means at his disposal to protect the country from attack.

Those are not the grounds on which this case was thrown out, yet those are precisely the grounds on which the district court found it unconstitutional.

You have it exactly backwards.

flounder:

Clearly, that evidence was illegally obtained, and the people who received it will be prosecuted.

Not picking on you in particular, Swan but for cryin' out loud.

Welcome to America. Speak English!

… there are no constitutional objections….that would defeat the President's inherent power as Commander-In-Chief to use all means at his disposal to "protect" the country … Chicounselat 1:35 PM

Rule 1: The President is always right

Rule 2: See rule 1

Since they do not have to reveal the source of information, the criteria will never be met.

We have met the terrorist: It is the Bush administration. We have met the existential threat to the US. It is the Bush administration. We have met the Fuhrerprinzip. It is the Bush Administration. Now it's time for martial law and ending all dissent. Off to the gulags, you damned doubters and troublemakers.

Of course, that leads to an inconvenient hurdle, doesn't it? To hear the 6th Circuit tell it, you can't file suit unless you know you've been subject to the surveillance. And how do you know if you've been spied on? You'd have to get that information from the Bush administration, which keeps all of that information secret.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure that this SCOTUS will find this reasoning to be completely sound--at least until 2009, then something or other will suddenly change that causes them to reverse themselves, such as the party affiliation of the executive branch.

The magic words embedded in Chicounsel's position are "at his disposal".

We have traditionally referred to the constitution and the bill of rights to determine what means are at the President's disposal. Judge Taylor was quite clear and correct in ruling that the TSP involved means not a the Presidents disposal.

If only some patriotic NSA or DoD or DOJ or ISP employee would pass the names of those spied on to ACLU.

As I have tried to explain on countless occasions, because the goal of the program is not to uncover evidence that will be used in the prosecution of a criminal case against

You have no assurance that this is not the goal because the government has refused to say. In fact, they're given some very interesting non-answers when asked if they had been using this program to collect information for trials. At any rate there's a strong possibility of evidence being fruit of the poisonous free with this secret and illegal program.

That would be poisonous "tree".

Either handwriting recognition has a long way to go or my handwriting does.

thersites, any lawyer who understands the law surrounding the issue would've explained it basically like I explained it. There's really not much of an easier way to say it, if any. But I don't have the time to think about it a lot before I write anyway. I spent loads of time hanging out here today already.

Don't worry. As soon as a Democrat is elected President all these executive power boosting precedents will be reversed. And then reversed again if/when a Republican is next elected.

Ah, there's nothing like an independent judiciary! (At least, there's been nothing like it in this country since Bush v. Gore.)

I thought my explanation was pretty plain-language, actually. Anyway, the cases and legal doctrines I talked about weren't on-point rulings (they weren't very similar situations, but for our purposes, the NAACP case is about the nest you could ask for. It's from the Civil Rights era, by the way) of course, especially the mootness one, but you'd make an argument to an appellate court by analogizing to the purposes the courts in those cases explained as being behind the decisions they made. That's how cases are won.

is about the nest you could ask for.

Oops, 'is about the best you could ask for'

Unless information gathered by this program is used against an individual in the prosecution of a crime, no one would have standing to challenge the program. The court's decision was correct.

You are dumber than a box of rocks.

Anyone who can show that they suffered a loss has standing to sue.

The court decision was based on the plaintiffs inability to demonstrate that they were spied upon, not that they were not subject to prosecution.

There is no possible way that you ever went to law school, much less are a practicing atty.

There used to be a timw when an appeal to the Supreme Court offered some hope.

Homer www.altara.blogspot.com

can't the ACLU ask for a rehearing en banc? there was a dissent, there's always a chance that the full sixth circuit would overturn the 3 judge panel's decision.

I LOVED the Kermit bit. It helped me understand the issue really well really easily.

Go Steve!

Doesn't FISA include a criminal statute? That is to say, couldn't an enterprising prosecutor go after either executive branch or telco officials with criminal charges for this?

The more we push those partisan five Justices - the better off Dems will have when the Dems take control of the presidental office.

THEN Dems can wiretap the Supreme Court Justices - Bush on his ranch - anybody they want - who will have standing to sue?

As long as Dems maintain control of the HOUSE - the Senate and the Presidential office - nobody will have standing to sue, and entrapment is easy thing with right knowledge. Dems can redistict, anything Bush did, Dems can do too.

It'll be all thanks to those partisan activistist GOP judges who never dared to be "Strict Reconstruction" when it came to the Bush administration.

Bush wants to wiretap - OKAY, it was fine with those two Republican-appointed judges in the 6th court of appeals.

I bet those two Republican-appointed judges don't even mind that Bush uses torture either - its a Repug thing. The US Constitution is basically a lefty-liberal ACLU thing, a girlie-man document.

I bet those two Republican-appointed judges like it very much that Libby could perjury himself and get out of prison. AND Bush, he lied about what he would do to anyone leaking the name of Valerie Plume.. It was a lie, simply as that.

As I recall, it was those "Strict Reconstruction" Republican judges that were the first to declare that "the Constitution is not a suicide pact".

With Bush in office, I've noticed the Christian must also think that the Ten Commandments is not suicide pact either, since it's very possible Bush and Cheney may have had to gone to jail too - had a jailed Libby ever talked.

It's like I said, the GOP is now the party of Bush.

The conservative party isn’t recognizable anymore and I'm certain that a fair amount of people have noticed that the trial judges are the "Strict Reconstruction" judges left, but not those so-call conservative judges in appeals courts and not even in the Supreme Court anymore.

So for the ACLU to have a legal standing they must first produce a victim.This is the entire basis of our legal system.Unless you can prove the Government has actually tapped the phone of a Citizen then your arguement has no legal basis.Good decision.

This is the same kind of Kafkaesque result that the wingnut SCOTUS gave us in the gender discrimination case where they ruled that if an employer is able to conceal the discrimination from the employee for a set amount of time, that the employee then has no standing to sue when they finally discover the discrimination, no matter how great the harm.

So for the ACLU to have a legal standing they must first produce a victim.This is the entire basis of our legal system.Unless you can prove the Government has actually tapped the phone of a Citizen then your arguement has no legal basis.Good decision.

It's illogical if there's a way for you to be harmed without it able to be redressed. It's like the Coors case I described above- the people who deal with people who are spied on should have standing to sue because this effects their relationship with them. It's the Coors case plus the NAACP case, and it's a real problem.

Stan,

There was never any question as to whether the ACLU had standing. The ACLU isn't the plaintiff. The ACLU is acting as counsel for the plaintiffs.

Do please try to keep up.

Furthermore, a decision which makes it impossible for an entire class of victims (those who have been harmed by secret gvmt programs) to sue undermines the entire basis of our legal system, and brings us one step closer to totalitarian gvmt, which is precisely the intent of wingnutters.