Not. One. Iota. Just whatever paranoid fantasies you can make up out of whole cloth.

http://www.floppingaces.net/2006/08/22/judge-taylor-participated-in-45000-donation-to-the-aclu/

I don’t know what to make of this yet. It does strike me as an ENORMOUS conflict of interest in the very least. There also seems to be a pattern emerging in another case involving another group before her court as a plaintiff. Is there anything to this?

Carol

“I’m going to cry and whine and hold my breath until I get my way.”

Yes, I love the idea of giving in to their childish antics. Nothing works quite as well as rewarding juvenile temper tantrums. Yes, let’s let them hold us hostage until we see the correctness of their infinite wisdom.

Interesting articles, and you’re 100% right about the tendency of courts and tribunals of all levels to write longer and more legalistic decisions.

I won’t pretend to know whether the NSA decision is good or bad law. I do recall Ronald Reagan saying, and I know this may not be word for word accurate “People who are willing to surrender their liberty in order to gain security will usually end up losing both.”

Too many conservatives, who ought to know better, have succumbed to this idea that everyone else in the world should adopt American style democracy or have it forced down their throats. Again, I refer to Ronald Reagan. The “Shining City on the hill” was meant as an example to inspire people.

The fundamental problem with the Iraq war is not its exection, horrendous as that has been. In the case of war by choice or pre-emptive war, the case should be overwhelming. The kindest thing that can be said about it is that the intelligence was defective. It is crystal clear that Iraq under Hussein, who was a nasty character all around, had nothing to do with terrorism against the US. The idea that the US invaded Iraq to establish a democratic state doesn’t pass the laugh test. People will argue for many years what the motivating factors actually were.

But the US is now in a dilemma. It can attempt to crush the resistance viz the French in Algeria, and demonstrate the talk about democracy to have been a fraud. Or it can allow the democratic process to work, and see authority in the country assumed by the Shia, who want a theocratic state and closer relations with Iran.

All in all an unpleasant situation with no palatable answer.

…even Dems on those committees have mostly kept their mouths shut, one wonders that if those who know more about this program than Judge Taylor or Lambchop aren’t saying it’s illegal and unconstitutional, how we do we square this with Taylor’s decision?

Strange indeed.

Stranger still is the deafening silence from the left over the agreed upon stay of Judge Taylor’s injunction against the NSA program.

Even “Lamchop,” who castigates others for criticizing in Judge Taylor’s opinion the vary same irrational incoherence which is his own congential mien, even he has had nothing of substance to say about the stay.

If the world is truly “going to hell in a handbasket” over this NSA surveillance program, if democracy is truly about to be wiped from the face of the earth as the shriekers would have us believe, if out ultimate doom is to result from this intelligence gathering effort, one from which no one single instance of injury has been established, then where are the cries of those doomed to perdition in the iterim? Where is the indignation that the NSA program will continue in effect through the considerations of the 6th Circuit and beyond to the Supreme Court justices?

You make an excellent point and the way I’d answer it is that the reasons for a “warrantless” look at the communications of a terrorist here who is talking to another terrorist overseas and why even with the delayed FISA notification the Administration may have felt it unecessary to get a warrant cannot truly be known because so many of the technical details of this program are hidden from us.

This is no small thing. It absolutely floors me that so many have declared this program “unconstitutional” based on incomplete and perhaps even faulty information. After all, the NSA has NEVER confirmed the details that have been published about the program. And it is unclear whether people quoted in news reports had the full picture either.

This goes to Jeff Goldstein’s summation; that in order to prove a secret program constitutional we have to destroy it.

It’s nuts.