POST CONSTITUTIONAL AMERICA: ILLEGAL COURT ISSUES ILLEGAL RULING

Unmentioned by the NY Times is the fact that a secret federal appeals court is an utter violation of our Constitution, whatever it rulings

NY Times - In a rare public ruling, a secret federal appeals court has said telecommunications companies must cooperate with the government to intercept international phone calls and e-mail of American citizens suspected of being spies or terrorists. The ruling came in a case involving an unidentified company's challenge to 2007 legislation that expanded the president's legal power to conduct wiretapping without warrants for intelligence purposes.

But the ruling, handed down in August 2008 by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review, did not directly address whether President Bush was within his constitutional powers in ordering domestic wiretapping without warrants, without first getting Congressional approval, after the terrorist attacks of 2001. . .

William C. Banks, a law professor at Syracuse University who has criticized the administration's legal position on eavesdropping, said that while the ruling did not address Mr. Bush's surveillance without warrants directly, "it does bolster his case" by recognizing that eavesdropping for national security purposes did not always require warrants.