Re: [MLUG - DISCUSSION] there are no black helicopters...

[Mike Miller <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

On Thu, 30 Mar 2006, Vern Green wrote:

> Yeah well whatever you say Mike.
>
> I found it interesting that five FISA judges yesterday said that Bush 
> acted within his authority on the wiretaps. But I guess those are just 
> the activist FISA judges.

That's interesting.  The NY Times had this:

  In a rare glimpse into the inner workings of the secretive court, known
  as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, several former judges
  who served on the panel also voiced skepticism at a Senate hearing about
  the president's constitutional authority to order wiretapping on
  Americans without a court order. They also suggested that the program
  could imperil criminal prosecutions that grew out of the wiretaps.

  Judge Harold A. Baker, a sitting federal judge in Illinois who served on
  the intelligence court until last year, said the president was bound by
  the law "like everyone else." If a law like the Foreign Intelligence
  Surveillance Act is duly enacted by Congress and considered
  constitutional, Judge Baker said, "the president ignores it at the
  president's peril."

...

  Judge Robertson resigned from the intelligence court just days after the
  N.S.A. program was disclosed.

  Colleagues say he resigned in frustration over the fact that none of the
  court's 11 judges, except for the presiding judge, were briefed on the
  program or knew of its existence.

So maybe it wasn't illegal, but it was still wrong and not in the spirit 
of the law.  I don't know that it wasn't illegal.

Mike

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