There's a big debate going on over whether former President Bill Clinton believed he had the inherent power to conduct warrantless electronic surveillance outside of FISA. Byron York says yes. Think Progress says no. Atrios explains.

For the record, I don't think Clinton broke the law while I think Bush probably did.

That said, let me also add that Bill Clinton was no friend on privacy issues (or on criminal justice issues for that matter.) Remember when the Clinton Administration acknowledged in June, 1996 that it improperly obtained more than 400 private and restricted FBI files of employees of previous administrations? (There are 882 articles on Lexis mentioning this between June 1 and June 30, 1996.)

The ACLU has filed multiple Freedom of Information Act requests over Bush's executive order for warrantless electronic surveillance and physical searches of persons within this country.

Here's the one to the National Security Agency.(pdf)

The requests submitted today seek all records about "the policies, procedures and/or practices of the National Security Agency for gathering information through warrantless electronic surveillance and/or warrantless physical searches in the United States ...".... Information received by the organization will be made public on its Web site.

Also recommended: The ACLU's FISA page and spy file page.

For those who want the tech talk of data-mining and interception capabilites, check out:

The end-of-year list season has officially opened with Arianna's list of things she'd like to forget. My favorites:

That there is a debate about whether waterboarding is actually torture.

Judy Miller, Bob Woodward, Viveca Novak: The Three Media Stooges of Plamegate

That Bush waited five days before visiting the Gulf following Katrina. And that once he got there, he joked about his hard-partying days, congratulated Mike Brown on doing a, and promised to rebuild Trent Lott’s house.

There's something for everyone in her list.

Bump and Update: It's now official. Jeanine Pirro has issued a statement announcing she's dropping out of the Senate race. She says her heart is in the Attorney General's race. Reuters is less than kind, repeating the worst about Pirro -- her husband:

One political problem for Pirro, who frequently appears on national talk shows and was listed by People Magazine in 1997 as one of the 50 most beautiful people in the world, was her marriage. Albert Pirro fathered an out-of-wedlock child and served 11 months in federal prison for tax fraud.

The paper also notes that Jeanine supports abortion and gay rights which conservatives could hold against her. That should be no problem in the AG's race, where she more than overcompensates by wanting life plus cancer for every person charged with a sex offense. [hyperbole, but only slight.]

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Original Post:

by TChris

Individuals who claim to be abuse victims often seek a restraining order against the abuser. In many states, a judge will issue a temporary restraining order on the strength of the alleged victim’s affidavit. The TRO remains in effect until a hearing is held to determine whether to enter a lengthier injunction prohibiting contact with the victim.

Too many judges rubber stamp the initial request for a TRO without taking care to decide whether the allegations warrant relief. That seems to be what happened when a Santa Fe woman obtained a TRO against David Letterman. The woman claimed that Letterman “forced her to go bankrupt and caused her ‘mental cruelty’ and ‘sleep deprivation’ since May 1994.” She asked the court to order Letterman to “stay at least 3 yards away and not ‘think of me, and release me from his mental harassment and hammering.’”

The ultra conservative Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals showed some backbone today and denied the Government's request to move indicted detainee Jose Padilla to the custody of the Attorney General from military custody. You can read the opinion here. (pdf) Big defeat for Bush.

In a stinging rebuke to the Bush administration, a U.S. appeals court refused on Wednesday to transfer Jose Padilla from U.S. military custody to federal authorities in Florida until the Supreme Court considers his case.

The high court said bringing criminal charges against Padilla in Florida after he had been held by the U.S. military for more than three years as an enemy combatant created the appearance that the government may be attempting to avoid Supreme Court review of the case.

Saddam Hussein had another outburst at his trial today. While a witness was on the stand testifying about his agents torturing people by tearing off their skin, Saddam claimed that he has been tortured during his time in detention.

"I want to say here, yes, we have been beaten by the Americans and we have been tortured," Saddam said, before gesturing to his seven co-defendants around him, "one by one."

After sitting quietly through several hours of testimony, Saddam said he'd been beaten "everywhere on my body. The marks are still there."

Chief prosecutor Jaafar al-Mousawi said Saddam's claims will be investigated.

VP Dick Cheney cast the tie-breaking vote to pass the stalled budget bill that reduces spending for social programs and hurts low income Americans. The bill slashes money for Medicaid, student loans, welfare and child support, while giving new tax breaks to the rich.

Emergency Campaign for America’s Priorities says Cheney kicked the crutches out from under Tiny Tim. At least, the Senate put in some changes that will require House approval, so the bill will be deferred until 2006. From the press release (received by e-mail):

The Senate has rejected Arctic drilling for oil and the bill passed by the House last week. A press release by the Alaska Wilderness League praises the Senate (received by e-mail):

"We congratulate all the members of the U.S. Senate who have stood up to Senator Stevens’ attempts at blackmail. It was a national disgrace that Senator Stevens was willing to hold funding for our troops hostage just to cut a deal for Big Oil. We congratulate the moderate members of Congress for voting the will of their constituents and fending off Stevens’ giveaway to the oil companies. We are proud to have preserved one of our last remaining wilderness areas for our children and future generations."

Law Professor Doug Berman who writes Sentencing Law and Policy, the go-to blog on criminal sentencing, e-mailed me some thoughts on Bush and his warrantless electronic surveillance orders, the topic being a little off-subject for his blog. He says the fitting label for Bush's behavior is "executive activism."

Unwilling or unable to obtain the power they seek though the legislative process, this administration has made up the law themselves.

I like the label and will go with it. Prof. Berman continues,

It highlights the hypocrisy of this administration in regularly attacking judges for their open efforts to enforce constitutional protections, while it engages in anti-democratic secret efforts to undermine constitutional protections.

Bush is an Executive Activist. Spread the word.

Unidentified sources tell Raw Story's Jason Leopold that Fitzgerald will not be shutting down his probe in the Valerie Plame leaks case when he's finished with Karl Rove.

Individuals close to the probe say Fitzgerald is still investigating other unnamed White House officials. This part of the investigation, like that of Rove, is focusing on whether these officials committed perjury, obstruction of justice or lied to federal investigators during the early days of the investigation -- as opposed to violating an obscure law which makes it a crime to knowingly leak the name of an undercover CIA operative -- they say.

President Bush has granted a pardon to a former drug offender and current Denver lawyer, Wendy St. Charles.

A Denver lawyer was pardoned Tuesday by President Bush for drug-related crimes she committed more than two decades ago. Wendy St. Charles, now 49, was among 11 people who received presidential pardons.

In 1984, she was sentenced to four years in prison in Illinois for conspiracy to conduct a narcotics enterprise and distribution of cocaine, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. She was also put on four years of special parole and four years of probation, which were to run consecutively with her sentence.

Why Ms. Charles? My surmise is her employer lobbied hard for her.