Nut-job Conspiracy Theory Ping!
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Posted on 04/07/2014 9:15:07 AM PDT by xzins
The US Supreme Court is chickening out and taking a step back from the entire NSA scandal. Rather than making a final decision on whether the bulk telephone metadata surveillance program is constitutional, the Supreme Court has decided to decline the case.
Instead, the Court has now left lower courts to contradict each other over the legality of this particular NSA surveillance program. One court, for instance, has described the metadata program as an “almost-Orwellian” effort.
In fact, this particular petition brought to the Supreme Court concerns precisely a decision given out by US District Judge Richard Leon, who also wrote that in his opinion, America’s founding fathers would be aghast at the spying practices.
Political activist Larry Klayman skipped the Appeal Court and went straight to the Supreme Court, saying that this is a case of imperative public importance, so it should immediately get the attention of the highest court. It should be mentioned that the Supreme Court doesn’t normally pick out cases before they go to the Federal Appeal Court.
The decision to ignore this particular case comes just before the White House is expected to come up with a series of more drastic reforms for the National Security Agency. So far, these reforms have extended to restricting the NSA’s access to the records and having a third party hold them rather than the agency itself, as if that will fix the issue generated by the initial collection.
Most people don’t really expect big changes in the way the United States conducts surveillance considering its weak response thus far and clear unwillingness to make any real changes.
The future of the telephony metadata collection program will most likely be decided by politicians rather than judges. There are several important bills awaiting in Congress, including some that will considerably cut down on NSA’s surveillance powers.
The intelligence community has been lobbying the Congress not to pass the bill, but social pressure might eventually pay off and the bills could still pass.
One of these bills has been written by Jim Sensenbrenner, the same man who wrote the Patriot Act, which the NSA uses to hide behind whenever it explains why a certain surveillance program is legal. Sensenbrenner now wants to set things right and make sure there’s no loophole to be used by the intelligence agencies.
Roberts was the worst mistake Bush ever made.
**************
Yes. I often pondered a some sort of mechanism for a popular impeachment of justices. The Founders grossly underestimated the judiciary’s capacity for mischief.
Nut-job Conspiracy Theory Ping!
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This has been an extremely poorly reported story and it presents a completely new issue for which there is no precedent on point. How does the 4th Amendment deal with computer metadata? Is it like a pen register that gets no constituional protection or is it like a wiretap that does?
The answer should not be a shot from the hip, but a thoughtful decision based on a thoroughly developed record, perhaps after several Circuits have ruled. A direct appeal from a single district court decision is not a good idea.
“How can they get away with this?”
They are either cowards or lazy, or most likely both.
They also refused to hear the gay marriage case.
They probably just want to keep their schedules open so they can go golfing with the kenian.
Because if in doing so they step in and circumvent the lower courts they setva horrible precedent and open the doors to circumvent the lower courts that much wider.
With a Conservative Court, that sort of thing would work for us. With a Liberal Court not so much, and we’d all scream bloody murder about it. Just like we did when the Dem Congress eff’d with all sorts of precedent to ram Obamacare through, and as we did when Reid and the Senate Dems pulled the trigger on the nuclear rule.
Which the Caliph will ignore, as he ignores any law that does not suit his purposes.
I don’t think there’s anything to develop. The NSA is getting warrants or they aren’t. That’s either a violation of the 4th amendment or it isn’t.
Let them rule and not stall.
Or he'll take one word out of paragraph 4(a)(1) "listen", and enforce that.
+1
And I’d add that altho Larry Klayman may have done a lot of good things, and I may agree with him most of the time, he’s still very much a drama queen. Throwing a hissy fit over not being given a special express train to the SCOTUS is yet another example.
See #27
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What I'm told by my IT people is I need to scrub every document I send someone because if I don't they can read my metadata. That doesn't sound like we have any reasonable expectation of privacy in what we put out on the internet and if not there is no Fourth Amendment protection. Do you want the Court to rule on that basis?
It's GOOD to have files on everyone...
Rule #1: no one is allowed into any position with any real power unless they are thoroughly compromised. Judges included. I’ve had opportunity to see some judges who, once obvious and blatant abuse of a defendant’s rights is exposed by police and/or prosecution, will tear them a new one at the bench or sidebar. Not because he was looking out for the defendants rights, but because the judge knew he was going to have to rule in favor or the prosecution in order to cover up that abuse because someone needed their ass covered. At some point in the future, students of history will look back on our “just us” system for the pile of hypocrisy and fraud that it is and wonder why it was allowed to go on for so long.
It’s not going to get cured easily.
Darn you! That’s a much better graphic than the one I posted!
Yes but even worse is making Roberts chief justice. Bush should have made Clarence Thomas chief justice.
Feel free to use it any time you want!................
Yep.
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