Bush moves to destroy Fourth Amendment using "State Secrets" privilege in warrantless surveillance cases

We’re blessed with Godly leaders who would never use the awesome super-powers of the Unilateral Executive simply to avoid “losing face” or even criminal prosecution.

Um, let me start over. The Republicans are trying to make sure than Americans who’ve had their Fourth Amendment rights trashed by the malAdministrations warrantless surveillance program never have their day in court. The Oregonian:

Facing two dozen legal skirmishes around the country over top-secret NSA [warrantless] surveillance programs, federal lawyers want to shift the battlefield to their home turf, where they will try to put an end to it all with a single shot.

In a little-noticed [by the Beltway] filing, U.S. Department of Justice lawyers on Monday asked the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation to consolidate about two dozen cases, including two from Oregon, before a judge in Washington, D.C.

Federal lawyers said they intended to seek dismissal of all the suits in order to protect state secrets.

“State secrets”… It sounds so, erm, authoritarian.

Together, the multiple NSA lawsuits challenge two distinct surveillance programs and allege violations of several federal laws.

The first program, revealed by The New York Times late last year, involves the warrantless eavesdropping of phone calls between suspected terrorists overseas and U.S. citizens on American soil. The other, reported earlier this year by USA Today, involves the collection and analysis of phone calls of millions of average Americans since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

In addition, some lawsuits are aimed at the federal government while others charge telephone companies with violating privacy rights.

And the telcos are all in favor of “state secrets” too:

William Weaver, a professor at the University of Texas El Paso and an expert on state secrets, said the government’s move makes a lot of sense for the reasons it stated: efficiency and the protection of top-secret materials.

But Weaver, a critic of the program, also says government lawyers have a strong tactical motivation to get all the cases in front of one friendly judge so it can snuff out the litigation all at once.

“This is clearly in the government’s favor,” Weaver said. “And it’s also clearly in the businesses’ favor because it will end up immunizing them from liability.”

To me, the issue is very simple. Let me just quote the Fourth Amendment for the benefit of the principled Republicans, if any, who may need a refresher:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Obviously, in the 18th Century, “papers” were made from dead trees. Today, papers are made from bits and bytes and put on the Internet. Same difference. If the criminal Bush regime wants to open an envelope in my desk, they need to get a warrant. If the criminal Bush regime wants to read the address on the outside of the envelope, they need to get a warrant. And in the same way, if the CBR wants to read my email, they need to get a warrant. And if they want to build a social network by reading I send my mail to, they need to get a warrant.

And you know that the CBR never went to court to get a warrant for their surveillance, not even FISA, which turned down like 4 requests in the decades of its existence, because they knew they couldn’t get one.

And you know that the CBR never tried to change FISA to make its warrantless surveillance legal, because not even the rubberstamp Republican Congress would have allowed it.

And you know that the CBR never gave even its lapdog intelligence committees any detail on its warrantless surveillance, because even the fluffiest of lapdogs can give an unexpected bark.

There’s only one thing disgusting enough that Bush would want to conceal it from everyone and that’s a massive domestic surveillance program where thousands of people’s real mail is being read, and thousands of people’s real phone conversations are being listened to.

State secrets my sweet Aunt Fanny. This whole sick farce has nothing to do with “terra”—what kind of terrorist mastermind would communicate in email, in the clear, when any fool knows that OBL uses messengers and paper only?

Make no mistake, Bush’s warrantless surveillance program is all about ratfucking. That’s what Republicans do and are.

It would be nice if one of the analysts who got the St. Louis feed would blow the whistle. Eh?

NOTE HT TPM Muckraker. Say, where are Pravda on the Potomac and Izvestia on the Hudson on this one. Still too busy sniffing Hillary’s panties to bother covering the story of how Bush is trashing the Constitution?