COURT RULES BUSH CAN IGNORE CONSTITUTION IF YOU CAN'T CATCH HIM DOING IT

UPDATED

ADAM LIPTAK, NY TIMES - A divided federal appeals court today dismissed a case challenging the National Security Agency’s program to wiretap without warrants the international communications of some Americans, reversing a trial judge’s order that the program be shut down. . .

The majority did not rule on the merits of the case, though the appeals judge who wrote the lead opinion, Alice M. Batchelder, said the case provoked "a cascade of serious questions." Those questions included whether the program violated a 1978 law, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, along with the Constitution’s First and Fourth Amendments. . .

A number of other challenges to the program have been consolidated before a federal judge in San Francisco, and the federal appeals court in California, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, will hear an appeal from one of the judge’s preliminary rulings next month.

Some plaintiffs in that case contend that they can prove standing even under the Sixth Circuit majority’s analysis. Those plaintiffs, an Islamic charity and two of its lawyers, say they have seen a classified document confirming that their communications were actually intercepted.

ACLU - Said ACLU Legal Director Steven R. Shapiro:"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."