Ex-Surveillance Judge Criticizes Warrantless Taps

[skiguy]

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."

After the program became public ....

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...062301125.html

What do you guys think of this?

[goesh]

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.

[skiguy]

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.

Thank you, goesh! That's about the most reasonable and logical answer I've ever heard about this.
Although, I'm still questioning whether or not any rules have actually been broken.

[goesh]

- on the other hand, you don't want guys like me in total control either because even though broken and bent rules can be mended, it is not written in stone that they will be. The ebb and flow of nature shows it to be the case , that there will be balance and history has shown that extentuating circumstances necessitating drastic action become rectified but the immediacy of human needs does not align itself well with time as reckoned by the forces of Nature. Saltation in nature usually portends bad things for the planet's newest species, homo sapiens, and despite having genetics and history as benchmarks and milestones, it is still our Law that governs and directs the collective response to the calamaties and disasters we make and what Nature provides. The efficacy of our Laws and traditions as currently applied may not carry us through if the fundamentalist mindset that seeks expression and control, and being supplanted with modern technology and weapons, is regarded as human saltation in retrograde. We like to think of saltation in human affairs as positive, forward, progressive, i.e. jumping into the industrial revolution, walking on the moon, the internet, but our wars demonstrate that out of death and chaos comes resurrection and order. Nature with is earthquakes and tsnumais, fire, flood, pestilience, drought and wind is quick to start the planet on a path of restoration and balance. I regard the jiahdist mindset as spiritual purgation on their part, not at all unlike an earthquake, that does not require a plan and blueprint for the aftermath because through political, economic, social and religious purgation can only come Divine Order as intended. Zawahiri's latest admonishment for hamas to implement Shariah Law in Gaza is in his mind every bit as natural as the seedling that pops up after a forest fire. He obviously sees adequate destruction for Allah's will to clearly manifest in human affairs in the newly cleansed Gaza. If we destroy, we must assist with the rebuilding. They only need to clean, like God's janitors.