Banana Republic
Mar 29th, 2006 at 10:59 am by Susie
What do you call a country without laws?
WASHINGTON, March 28 — Five former judges on the nation’s most secretive court, including one who resigned in apparent protest over President Bush’s domestic eavesdropping, urged Congress on Tuesday to give the court a formal role in overseeing the surveillance program.
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.”
Could anyone hear Judge Baker over the high-decibel circus music that plays over loudspeakers in the halls of Congress?
wait a minute. Was that a trick question?
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Federal judges give a boost to legislation that would bring court scrutiny to the Bush administratio…
Oh there are laws, but only for those who don’t sit near the salt.