Ex-Surveillance Judge Criticizes Warrantless Taps
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A federal judge who used to authorize wiretaps in terrorism and espionage cases criticized yesterday President Bush's decision to order warrantless surveillance after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
"We have to understand you can fight the war [on terrorism] and lose everything if you have no civil liberties left when you get through fighting the war," said Royce C. Lamberth, a U.S. District Court judge in Washington and a former presiding judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, speaking at the American Library Association's annual convention.
Lamberth, who was appointed to the federal bench by President Ronald Reagan, expressed his opposition to letting the executive branch decide on its own which people to spy on in national security cases.
The judge said it is proper for executive branch agencies to conduct such surveillance. "But what we have found in the history of our country is that you can't trust the executive," he said.
"The executive has to fight and win the war at all costs. But judges understand the war has to be fought, but it can't be at all costs," Lamberth said at the Washington Convention Center. "We still have to preserve our civil liberties. Judges are the kinds of people you want to entrust that kind of judgment to more than the executive."
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After the program became public ....:mad:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...062301125.html
What do you guys think of this?
Bending, Breaking, Fixing
I don't think it is indelibly written in stone that once rules and laws that apply to civil liberties are bent and broken, they can never be set straight again. Japanese-American citizens would still be residing in internment camps and Blacks would still be sitting in the back of the bus and not voting if the logical extension of such thinking is fully extended. The Constitution cannot aid and abet its own demise, it cannot shelter and protect those forces that seek its destruction. One either believes that international, organized terrorism is out to destroy us or you don't. We The People are the Constitution, not people in elected office and if the destruction of us and our way of life is the intended goal of AQ and allied forces, then by any all means necesary must the scourge be eradicated. Some people tell us that AQ and its kind are small, not a real threat to our way of life, that they are only power mongers and not spiritually committed to killing us. These folks have their own agendas and seek power and profit, just as my line of reasoning does. These folks will provide one-world panaceas of resolution of better foreign policy and economic development with dialouge, diplomacy, compromise and equitable justice being the only tried and trusted vehicles of change. They will tell you the world is too complex and intertwined and divergent for any fundamentalist mindset to seriously take hold and grow. If out of chaos comes order and survivability ,then it behooves us visit chaos upon the camps of our enemies so that our system of order ultimately prevails. This necessarily involves the curtailment of privliged freedoms whose expression and application has no direct and immediate bearing on our survivability and collective well being. I contend that man-made Laws which are broken and bent can be mended and do get mended. Opponents to this view fear not, but the Laws of nature demonstrate to the contrary and clearly, this debate in no way diminishes the intent and capability of the AQ mindset and those in alignment with that mindset.
