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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dale Baker who wrote (7105)	12/17/2005 9:19:47 AM
From: Rambi	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 540956

I agree with you on both counts. This is a real body blow, regardless of the legal outcome, and given the length of time it will take to investigate and reach legal conclusions, even were one favorable to the WH, Bush is hamstrung for quite a while in his agenda. Add this to the reputation of a presidency that has operated so secretively, communicated so poorly, and manipulated so egregiously, there isn't a lot of willingness to give the benefit of the doubt any longer. It looks as if the WH has a legal precedent they will fall back on and thus it begins. An excerpt from the Globe: But specialists on national security law said yesterday that the administration can cite at least one court ruling to support any assertion that Bush had the power to sidestep the 1978 surveillance law and authorize spying without a warrant. Under the 1978 law, a special court operates out of the Justice Department to review requests for warrants in cases involving national security. In 2002, an appeals panel of the court concluded that the president has ''inherent constitutional authority to conduct warrantless foreign intelligence surveillance." It added that ''a crucial factor" in determining whether a search is reasonable is ''the threat to society." Still, some specialists on national security law discounted the special court's opinion, noting that the Supreme Court has never ruled on the matter. Elizabeth Rindskopf Parker, a former general counsel to the NSA, said the special court's opinion ''got my blood boiling because in one fell swoop a group of judges with no particular claim of experience, and who had never sat before, swept away three decades of rulings and policies about how to interpret these things."