Did You Know - Enemy Combatants

I can't believe that there's anyone left in the U.S., if they follow any news at all, that still doesn't believe the President Bush has attempted, repeatedly, to undermine our laws and our constitution. More evidence...

The U.S. government cannot use new anti-terrorism laws to keep American residents locked up indefinitely without charging them, a divided federal appeals court said Monday.

The ruling was a harsh rebuke of one of the central tools President George W. Bush's administration believes it has to combat terror.

From CanadaEast

Wiretapping Cases Under Fire

The New York Times has published an article on the Bush administration's attempts to rewrite the U.S. Constittuion and some judges are fighting back. Please note - the NYT requires free registration to read their articles online. Below is a brief clip - the entire article is much more detailed.

Secrecy Is at Issue in Suits Opposing Spy Program

By ADAM LIPTAK

The Bush administration has employed extraordinary secrecy in defending the National Security Agency’s highly classified domestic surveillance program from civil lawsuits. Plaintiffs and judges’ clerks cannot see its secret filings. Judges have to make appointments to review them and are not allowed to keep copies.

Judges have even been instructed to use computers provided by the Justice Department to compose their decisions.

But now the procedures have started to meet resistance. At a private meeting with the lawyers in one of the cases this month, the judges who will hear the first appeal next week expressed uneasiness about the procedures, said a lawyer who attended, Ann Beeson of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Lawyers suing the government and some legal scholars say the procedures threaten the separation of powers, the adversary system and the lawyer-client privilege.

President Bush Thinks He Was Elected God, Not President

From Sign On Sand Diego

A federal judge struck down President Bush's authority to designate groups as terrorists, saying his post-Sept. 11 executive order was unconstitutionally vague, according to a ruling released Tuesday. The Humanitarian Law Project had challenged Bush's order, which blocked all the assets of groups or individuals he named as “specially designated global terrorists” after the 2001 terrorist attacks.

“This law gave the president unfettered authority to create blacklists,” said David Cole, a lawyer for the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Constitutional Rights that represented the group. “It was reminiscent of the McCarthy era.”

Betcha Didn't Know This

From The Center for American Progress - The Progress Report

ETHICS -- POLITICAL CONTRIBUTIONS BY JUDICIAL NOMINEES RAISE ETHICAL CONCERNS: "At least two dozen federal judges appointed by President Bush since 2001 made political contributions to key Republicans or to the president himself while under consideration for their judgeships, " a report by the Center for Investigative Reporting reveals. Twenty-three percent of Bush-appointed appellate judges and more than 16 percent of district judges gave contributions to Bush, national campaign committees, and legislators influential in the judicial nomination process while they were being considered for the bench. There are currently no laws that prohibit campaign contributions by judicial nominees, but critics fear that "creating even the appearance of impropriety ...can shake the public's confidence in the impartiality and independence of the judiciary." The President considers judicial nominees with input from senators of the same party, a process that is often controlled by state party politics . "If you don't have the blessing of the county and state party chairs you can stop right there," says Professor Tom Hagel, a professor at the University of Dayton School of Law and a part-time trial judge and brother to Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE). Political contributions, he explains, "play into that process, as a demonstration of 'how loyal and appreciative' a judicial candidate is. "