This story keeps going and going.
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
D. 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.Robertson, who was appointed to the federal bench in Washington by
President Bill Clinton in 1994 and was later selected by then-Chief Justice
William H. Rehnquist to serve on the FISA court, declined to comment when
reached at his office late yesterday.Word of Robertson’s resignation came as two Senate Republicans yesterday
joined the call for congressional investigations into the National Security
Agency’s warrantless interception of telephone calls and e-mails to overseas
locations by U.S. citizens suspected of links to terrorist groups. They
questioned the legality of the operation and the extent to which the White
House kept Congress informed.
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here.
Now we are losing FISA judges over the actions of Bush. This means Bush is
destroying a key asset in the war on terror and further aiding our enemy.
The longer Congress takes to act on this the worse it will get. Isn’t it
ironic that this is all coming out at the same time Congress is arguing the
Patriot Act? We are seeing proof that Bush likes to overstep his authority and
going unchecked is a dangerous act for him. Perhaps the Patriot Act should be
tabled and Congress should take this issue up immediately to get it resolved.