At least one judge seems to mind Bush’s disregard for the judiciary

December 21, 2005

The White House insists there’s nothing wrong with the president sidestepping the law and spying within the United States without seeking a judge’s approval. One of the judges who’s been signing off on secret warrants clearly disagrees.

A federal judge has resigned from the court that oversees government surveillance in intelligence cases in protest of President Bush’s secret authorization of a domestic spying program, according to two sources.

U.S. District Judge James Robertson, one of 11 members of the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, sent a letter to Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. late Monday notifying him of his resignation without providing an explanation.

Two associates familiar with his decision said yesterday that Robertson privately expressed deep concern that the warrantless surveillance program authorized by the president in 2001 was legally questionable and may have tainted the FISA court’s work.

If Robertson’s name sounds familiar to you, it may be because he ruled earlier this year that the Bush administration could not deny detainees at Guantanamo Bay protections under the Geneva Conventions.

Robertson’s very public resignation — on the front page of the WaPo — will help keep attention on Snoopgate as the story enters Day Five.

The bad news about this all-too-rare demonstration of principle-over-career: now Bush gets to fill that vacancy.

Considering how the vacancy was created, I hope the Senators are extra-aggressive with the ol’ advise-and-consent.

  • I’ve seen too much shit from BushCo being ignored and/or ratified by his minions and the too-often callow Dems and the CCCP to believe anything of substance will come from this kerfluffle. Should Bush be impeached and convicted and removed from office? Of course. Will it happen? Not in my lifetime. The Rethugs in Congress will continue to apologize and protect the lying, corrupt and incompetent thief.

    Like unused muscles that atrophy and become useless, the Rethugs have failed to use any integrity and independence for so long that they can no longer represent their electors/constituants; instead they will just continue their sucking up to their campaign contributors and to protect/perpetuate their power to feed from the public trough. For Rethugs to now try to change and become outraged — real or feigned — would be like a couch potato trying to run a marathon …he’d drop dead from a heart attack before he passed two miles. The same will happen here for the Rethugs… they’ll give up on real investigations as soon as they think the public is distracted enough by high fuel/energy costs or paying their taxes (at least the poor and middle classes will have to worry about that).

    OR, Bush will engineer another “terroist attack” on our homeland — one carried out by the black ops groups in Dumbsfeld’s DoD — and the sheep will be scared so shitless that they would literally follow Hitler if Hitler talked tough and promised to keep them safe. Hell, most would WILLINGLY agree to marshall law and the suspension of all of our civil liberties if they thought it would keep them “safe”.

    I guess Ben Franklin would be seen today as a defeatist and a traitor by those who accept this horseshit nonsense. As I said here earlier this week, what a bunch of damn fools.

  • Thanks Scott. I wondered about that too and you’ve cleared it up for me. In case anyone is as clueless as I was about how this could taint other casework by the FICA court, Robertson’s concern is that warrants they did grant were based on illegally obtained evidence from these wiretaps.

  • So, what took him so long to resign in disgust? Is his deep concern only triggered once the story is public?

  • GP

    This is speculation on my part, but the reason Robertson is resigning now could be because the FISA court itself wasn’t made aware that this was happening.

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