The Judicial Coffin

By Joseph Klein
FrontPageMagazine.com

"Yet thoroughly imbued with a reverence for the guarantied rights of individuals, I was slow to adopt the strong measures, which by degrees I have been forced to regard as being within the exceptions of the Constitution and as indispensable to the public Safety. Nothing is better known to history than that Courts of justice are utterly incompetent to such cases.”
These were not the words of George W. Bush. They were spoken by President Abraham Lincoln, when explaining the extraordinary measures such as suspension of the writ of habeas corpus that he took to deal with “Rebellion”. Rebellion was one of the special circumstances recognized by the Constitution, which justified the use of extraordinary powers that may temporarily curb civil liberties otherwise protected by the Constitution. The other exception is “Invasion”, which is what we now face in our post-9/11 world by global networks of Islamic-fascists.

Judge Anna Diggs Taylor – a Jimmy Carter appointee to the federal district court – has provided the most recent confirmation of Honest Abe’s wisdom concerning the limitations of our regular court system in times of such national emergencies. The ACLU filed a lawsuit on behalf of an assortment of journalists, lawyers and academics who claimed – without any proof of actual monitoring of their own communications - that the National Security Agency’s surveillance of electronic communications between persons in this country and suspected terrorists residing abroad impaired their ability to deal with their Middle Eastern, Asian or African associates by phone or e-mail. In a poorly reasoned opinion that found an assortment of phantom violations of the free speech, search and seizure and separation of powers provisions of the Constitution, she agreed with the ACLU. She struck down the National Security Administration’s warrantless surveillance of electronic communications between persons in this countries and suspected terrorists abroad.

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