Victory For The Bush Administration: Appeals Court Strikes Down NSA Lawsuit
As well it should have:
CINCINNATI - A federal appeals court ordered the dismissal Friday of a lawsuit challenging President Bush’s domestic spying program, saying the plaintiffs had no standing to sue.
The 2-1 ruling by the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel vacated a 2006 order by a federal judge in Detroit, who found that the post-Sept. 11 warrantless surveillance aimed at uncovering terrorist activity violated constitutional rights to privacy and free speech and the separation of powers.
U.S. Circuit Judge Julia Smith Gibbons, one of the two Republican appointees who ruled against the plaintiffs, said they failed to show they were subject to the surveillance.
The dissenting judge, Democratic appointee Ronald Lee Gilman, believed the plaintiffs were within their rights to sue and that it was clear to him the program violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978.
Notice the difference between the Republican-appointed judges and the Democrat-appointed judge.
The Republican appointees ruled that you have to actually, you know, prove that you were effected by the people you’re suing in order to carry on with your lawsuit. The Democrat appointee was all for letting this lawsuit go forward despite the fact that the plaintiffs couldn’t even prove that their calls or other communications had been monitored. Or even showing any sort of damages from the NSA program to begin with.
