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WASHINGTON-A federal appeals court yesterday reversed a district court ruling that President Bush's warrantless surveillance program was illegal,delivering a major victory to the administration in one of the most significant constitutional disputes to arise in the war on terrorism.By a 2-to-1 vote, an appeals court in Cincinnati ruled that a group of plaintiffs, led by the American Civil Liberties Union, had no legal standing to challenge the National Security Agency's surveillance program. Because the decision to dismiss the case was based on that legal technicality, the court did not take a position on the legality of the program.Still, the decision erased the only judicial repudiation of the White House's claim that Bush has the wartime power to bypass a law that forbids the government from eavesdropping on Americans' phone calls and e-mails without a judge's permission. Last August, a federal district judge in Detroit had ruled that the warrantless spying program was illegal and must be shut down.Moreover, yesterday's decision bolstered the administration's position in this and similar cases that any courtroom discussions of the program would jeopardize "state secrets," and so lawsuits challenging the program must be dismissed-an argument that the district judge in Detroit had rejected in her ruling last summer."We are pleased with the Court's decision today, which confirms that plaintiffs in this case cannot seek to expose sensitive details about the classified and important Terrorist Surveillance Program," said Brian Roehrkasse , a Justice Department spokesman.ACLU legal director Steve Shapiro called the ruling "deeply disappointing.""As a result of today's decision, the Bush administration has been left free to violate the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which Congress adopted almost 30 years ago to prevent the executive branch from engaging in precisely this kind of unchecked surveillance," he said. To read more go to:
As in the days of Noah....
