Why Do the Courts Hate America?

Kevin Drum notes that the Bush administration is getting spanked hard by the judiciary.

First, it seems the FISA court judge who resigned isn't the only one unhappy with the illegal wiretapping. Now the chief judge is calling a meeting of the court to discuss the issue, and it looks like they'll make the administration do some 'splainin:

The judges could, depending on their level of satisfaction with the answers, demand that the Justice Department produce proof that previous wiretaps were not tainted, according to government officials knowledgeable about the FISA court. Warrants obtained through secret surveillance could be thrown into question. One judge, speaking on the condition of anonymity, also said members could suggest disbanding the court in light of the president's suggestion that he has the power to bypass the court.

Of course, the administration has a perfectly good justification for bypassing the court:

One government official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the administration complained bitterly that the FISA process demanded too much: to name a target and give a reason to spy on it.

"For FISA, they had to put down a written justification for the wiretap," said the official. "They couldn't dream one up." [emphasis added]

And then there's the case of Jose Padilla. After arguing for years that Padilla was an enemy combatant in order to justify handling his case in a military court, when faced with possible Supreme Court review of the case they suddenly decided to drop those charges and filed new, lesser charges in a civilian court. The 4th Circuit said no, and they said it in a particularly scathing opinion:

They have left the impression that the government may even have come to the belief that the principle in reliance upon which it has detained Padilla for this time, that the President possesses the authority to detain enemy combatants who enter into this country for the purpose of attacking America and its citizens from within, can, in the end, yield to expediency with little or no cost to its conduct of the war against terror — an impression we would have thought the government likewise could ill afford to leave extant.

And these impressions have been left, we fear, at what may ultimately prove to be substantial cost to the government’s credibility before the courts, to whom it will one day need to argue again in support of a principle of assertedly like importance and necessity to the one that it seems to abandon today. While there could be an objective that could command such a price as all of this, it is difficult to imagine what that objective would be.

Kevin notes that the author is Michael Luttig, a favorite judge of the wingnuts. Not any more. I guess some of those judges take all that 'rule of law' crap seriously.

[That's all, folks]