?Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgement that something else is more important than fear.?
It was an excellent bit of news for law-lovers yesterday that the US District Court had held that Bush’s NSA wiretapping programme is illegal and that it had issued an immediate injunction.
But immediately came the attacks on the judge, first for her having had the uppity notion that a mere judge may gainsay King Chimpy, secondly that the US constitution doesn’t say what she says it does so nyer, and third that she’s black and positive on civil rights anyway and so obviously is an Islamofascist traitor who should be strung up. And did we mention she’s black, female, liberal scum ?
I’ve a feeling this’ll be going to the Supreme Court, though there’s still the matter of the immediate injunction – which basically says to the executive “Stop. Now. We mean it. Yes, really.” – to be dealt with, an order which the administration is obliged to either challenge or obey. They have said they’lll appeal on September 7th, but that’s 2 1/2 weeks away – what will they be doing in the meantime?
In the event the case does get as far as the Supremes it will then become crystal clear even to the slow learners and the inattentive cutups at the back exactly why Bush and Cheney wanted Alito on the court so badly.
No doubt Bush et al think they’re free and clear with the Alito card up their collective sleeve, and anyway it’s only those pesky ACLU types, who can be swatted easily. But the Register reports that there’re another 17 pending cases in California that have just been consolidated into one megacase, and particularly disadvantageously so for the administration.:
Valley Justice AT&T and other telcos had better unlock the file cabinets and brace for the backlash because the mother lode of wiretapping cases has just landed in unfriendly territory.
Both the Feds and the telcos earlier this month took a hit when the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation consolidated the pretrial proceedings of 17 different warrantless wiretapping suits that accuse the telcos of forming uncomfortable ties with the NSA. The Panel placed the cases under the supervision of Judge Vaughn Walker of the District Court for the Northern District of California. Yes, that?s right, the same judge who last month denied the government?s motion to block discovery in one of the cases on state secret grounds.
The Register thinks this means judges may be sending government and their enablers in the telecoms industry a message:
Reading the tealeaves, you could argue that the consolidation out West also shows that the general mood among jurists in the country is leaning towards a full airing of the secrets behind the wiretap programs. We like to believe this explanation, if only because it ever-so-slightly renews our faith in the system, along with our belief in truth, justice, beauty and the rest of it.
And in these days of domestic spying and militarism, we need all the help we can get.
Now that the telcos’re being drawn in as defendants too, yesterday’s NSA decision will have sent a ripple of horror down the spines of many a telco executive, especially so considering the bad PR, potential civil lawsuits and the subsequent massive payouts that will inevitably follow any juidgement against them. They must be pretty pissed off with Cheney and Addington and their assurances that the program’s all legal and their asses are covered.
Now hard corporate money is at stake the pressure on judges is getting to get even more intense. Both the paid and voluntary Cheeto-stained blowhards of the wingnutosphere will grow ever more strident and overt in their calls for the punishment of traitorous activist judges. There’ll be subtler pressures too, in federal social circles and on the golf course for instance . It’s going to get very nasty to be a judge for a while – it may even come to physical violence – and some may well bend or even break under the strain.
But there are still more cases in the pipeline. With any luck the courts will be so busy it’ll soon become too difficult for the hatebloggers to keep track of which judge they’re supposed to be death-threatening on any given day.
Read more:
Wiretapping, Surveillance, Telcos, NSA, Bush, Cheney, Addington Alito Supreme Court
