THAT HORSE HAS DONE LEFT THE BARN:

The Judiciary Strikes Back: The government fails to kill off a court challenge to NSA snooping. (Patrick Radden Keefe, 19 July 2006, Slate)

Until Thursday, the NSA wiretapping scandal had gone remarkably well for the Bush administration...

But that all changed when a federal judge in San Francisco on Thursday issued a ruling on an obscure procedural point in a court case between the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights nonprofit, and AT&T. Judge Vaughn Walker rejected the government's claim that because of the doctrine of state secrets, traditionally used to prevent the introduction into court of specific evidence that might compromise national security, he should dismiss EFF's entire case against the phone company...

Game, Set and Match to Bush. Let's assume that 1) Bush's Separation of Powers claims are without basis and 2) that Congress fails to strip jurisdiction from the courts and that 3) both the Supreme Court and the 9th Circuit (who has been surprisingly deferential on these matters) side with Judge Walker, at that point, all Congress has to do is codify the common-law states secrets privilege into whatever form ends the suit.

Posted by Pepys at July 21, 2006 8:06 PM