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In a recent commentary, former New York Mayor Ed Koch - a Democrat with at least half a brain (which makes him the leading intellectual light of his party) - asked rhetorically, "Why do so many Americans refuse to face the fact that our country is at war with international terrorism?" Because they're liberals? During the Spanish Civil War, as the climactic battle for Madrid approached, Nationalist leader Francisco Franco told a reporter: "I have four columns marching on Madrid and a fifth within the city ready to rise at my call." Franco's comment gave rise to the World War...

Hoekstra predicts jailing of reporters Thursday, August 31, 2006 By Myron Kukla The Grand Rapids Press HOLLAND -- New York Times reporters who broke the story of a three-year program of warrantless wiretapping of U.S. citizens will be in jail by yearend if they don't reveal their government sources, U.S. Rep. Peter Hoekstra predicted Wednesday. The revelation last December has been a devastating blow to intelligence gathering, said Hoekstra, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. "If people understood the threat out there (from terrorist organizations), Americans would be absolutely furious that the tools we have to track the terrorists have...

August 27, 2006 -- If there were any doubt that a federal judge's decision earlier this month declaring the Bush administration's warrantless-surveillance program unconstitutional was blatantly political, consider this: Judicial Watch reports that the judge, Anna Diggs Taylor, is an officer and trustee of a group that funds the American Civil Liberties Union's Michigan branch - which was a plaintiff in the case. Indeed, the Community Foundation for Southeastern Michigan's board of trustees, which includes Judge Taylor, makes all funding decisions for the group - and has given the local ACLU at least $125,000 since 1999. Legal-ethics experts disagree on...

Why Britain Stopped the Terror PlotBy Insight MagazineInsight Magazine | August 25, 2006 The Homeland Security Department has neither the legal nor technical tools to match the British capture of terrorist operatives before they were about to blow up passenger airliners.Officials said U.S. law would not have allowed the FBI to conduct the type of surveillance that led Britain to uncover the al Qaeda cell and capture what could be the network’s chief. They said the department also does not have the funding to detect new types of bombs used by al Qaeda.''What helped the British in this case is...

TO end her opinion in American Civil Liberties Union v. National Security Agency — the case that enjoins President Bush’s warrantless surveillance program — Judge Anna Diggs Taylor quoted Earl Warren (referring to him as “Justice Warren,” not “Chief Justice Warren,” as if she wanted to spotlight her carelessness): “It would indeed be ironic if, in the name of national defense, we would sanction the subversion of ... those liberties ... which makes the defense of the nation worthwhile.”

Last week US District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor, in Detroit, Michigan, ruled that the National Security Agency’s overseas communications intercept program was unconstitutional. This is tied for the worst decision I’ve ever read, in 36 years as a member of the bar, both federal and state. Dozens of pundits have already written about aspects of her decision that are egregiously wrong. Even the august New York Times, which opposes the NSA program and favors Judge Taylor’s result, still has called her opinion “badly reasoned.” It’s important that lawyers, legal writers, and experienced laymen be able to recognize a thoroughly incompetent...

Taylor Conflicted? The judge who ruled against the government and ruled the NSA terrorist surveillance program unconstitutional may have had an undisclosed conflict of interest. Anna Diggs Taylor also serves as a trustee and officer to an organization that donated $45,000 to the Michigan chapter of the ACLU -- which happened to be one of the plaintiffs in the case (via Hot Air): Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption and judicial abuse, announced today that Judge Anna Diggs Taylor, who last week ruled the government’s warrantless wiretapping program unconstitutional, serves as a Secretary and...

Who is Anna Diggs Taylor and what does she have against national security? The answer to the first question is: a U.S. district judge in Detroit. The answer to the second is as mysterious as the decision she handed down Thursday. In her 44-page ruling, Judge Taylor ordered the National Security Agency to stop monitoring international calls to and from this country, aka "domestic spying" in New York Times style. The judge found the practice not just illegal but unconstitutional. And also un-American in just about every crass, rhetorical way she could. The crux of her opinion reads like an...

Washington, DC -- Judge Anna Diggs Taylor, the U.S. District Judge who presided over the highly controversial government wiretapping case, and decided against the President, may have had a conflict of interest that should have precluded her from judging the case. According to research by Judicial Watch, Judge Anna Diggs Taylor serves as the Secretary and Trustee of a foundation that donated funds to the ACLU of Michigan, a Plaintiff in the case.

"Ann Beeson, the American Civil Liberties Union's associate legal director and the lead attorney for the plaintiffs challenging the government's wiretapping policy, addresses the media in Detroit, in this June 12, 2006, file photo. A federal judge ruled Thursday, Aug. 17, 2006 that the government's warrantless wiretapping program is unconstitutional and ordered an immediate halt to it. U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor in Detroit became the first judge to strike down the National Security Agency's program, which she says violates the rights to free speech and privacy. "Ann Beeson, the American Civil Liberties Union associate legal director and...

U.S. District Judge Who Presided Over Government Wiretapping Case May Have Had Conflict of Interest (Washington, DC) Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption and judicial abuse, announced today that Judge Anna Diggs Taylor, who last week ruled the government’s warrantless wiretapping program unconstitutional, serves as a Secretary and Trustee for a foundation that donated funds to the ACLU of Michigan, a plaintiff in the case (ACLU et. al v. National Security Agency). Judicial Watch discovered the potential conflict of interest after reviewing Judge Diggs Taylor’s financial disclosure statements. According to her 2003 and 2004...

Item: British authorities shatter a conspiracy by Islamists in London to kill thousands of innocent people by blowing up nine passenger airliners over the Atlantic Ocean. Officials cite human intelligence and electronic surveillance by British, U.S. and Pakistani services. Item: Less than a week later, a federal judge in Michigan rules some of the methods that brought the London terrorists to justice before they could hurt anyone are illegal. Judge Anna Diggs Taylor, a Carter appointee, finds warrantless wiretaps by the National Security Agency of calls originating overseas are illegal and sides with the plaintiff, the American Civil Liberties Union....

Judge Anna Diggs Taylor Serves as Secretary and Trustee of Foundation that donated funds to ACLU of Michigan, a Plaintiff in the Case Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption and judicial abuse, announced today that Judge Anna Diggs Taylor, who last week ruled the government’s warrantless wiretapping program unconstitutional, serves as a Secretary and Trustee for a foundation that donated funds to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Michigan, a plaintiff in the case ACLU et al. v. National Security Agency. Judicial Watch discovered the potential conflict of interest after reviewing Judge Diggs...

Federal district court Judge Anna Diggs Taylor has ruled that the warrantless interception of telephone and Internet calls between a foreign agent and American persons is illegal and unconstitutional. It is possible that she is right about the illegality, but she is almost surely wrong that it is unconstitutional. The government has appealed this decision to the Sixth Circuit. No one can say what it will decide, although other appeals courts have tolerated such surveillance. Ultimately the Supreme Court will have to decide the matter. The constitutional arguments against the surveillance are unpersuasive. A Washington Post editorial dismissed them as...

When is a bad decision good? When it yields unexpectedly good returns. On Thursday, in a Detroit federal court, Judge Anna Diggs Taylor issued a disturbing and flawed ruling that essentially struck down the Bush administration's Terrorist Surveillance Program (TSP). The plaintiffs in this case -- including the inscrutable Christopher Hitchens, an otherwise resolute ally of the president's in the war against Islamic fascism; the ACLU; the Council on American Islamic Relations; Greenpeace; the publisher of The American Prospect; an NYU professor; and assorted attorneys -- apparently hand-picked a court and a judge that would deliver the desired result. But...

"Yet thoroughly imbued with a reverence for the guarantied rights of individuals, I was slow to adopt the strong measures, which by degrees I have been forced to regard as being within the exceptions of the Constitution and as indispensable to the public Safety. Nothing is better known to history than that Courts of justice are utterly incompetent to such cases.” These were not the words of George W. Bush. They were spoken by President Abraham Lincoln, when explaining the extraordinary measures such as suspension of the writ of habeas corpus that he took to deal with “Rebellion”. Rebellion was...

JIMMY CARTER has criticized, but has been powerless to stop, the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping of al-Qaida suspects' communications. Until last week, that is. On Thursday U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor, a former civil rights activist appointed to the federal bench by Carter in 1979, ruled the wiretapping program unconstitutional. The plaintiffs were journalists, attorneys and activists who want to contact al-Qaida members and suspects overseas. They alleged that the NSAs practice of monitoring international communications of al-Qaida members and those suspected of being in or aiding the group violated their First and Fourth Amendment rights. How? Terrorists and...

There is poor reasoning, and then there is head-spinningly, jaw-droppingly poor reasoning. U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor's angry 44-page ruling against NSA terrorism surveillance is the latter, and constitutes little more than a political stunt, with ever-so-helpful declarations like "There are no hereditary Kings in America and no powers not created by the Constitution." The American Civil Liberties Union forum-shopped this lawsuit, handed it to a reliably left-liberal Jimmy Carter appointee in Detroit and got its desired result.