Supreme court won't review Bush domestic spying case

SCOTUS refuses to hear Bush Spy Case

By James Vicini

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Supreme Court on Tuesday turned down a legal challenge to the warrantless domestic spying program President George W. Bush created after the September 11 attacks.

The American Civil Liberties Union had asked the justices to hear the case after a lower court ruled the ACLU, other groups and individuals that sued the government had no legal right to do so because they could not prove they had been affected by the program.

The civil liberties group also asked the nation's highest court to make clear that Bush does not have the power under the U.S. Constitution to engage in intelligence surveillance within the United States that Congress has expressly prohibited.

"The president is bound by the laws that Congress enacts. He may disagree with those laws, but he may not disobey them," Jameel Jaffer, director of the ACLU's National Security Project, said in the appeal.

Bush authorized the program to monitor international phone calls and e-mails of U.S. citizens without first obtaining a court warrant. The program's disclosure in December 2005 caused a political uproar among Democrats, some Republicans and civil liberties activists.

The administration abandoned the program about a year ago, putting it under the surveillance court that Congress created more than 30 years ago.

The high court's action means that Bush will be able to disregard whatever legislative eavesdropping restrictions Congress adopts as there will be no meaningful judicial review, the ACLU attorneys said.

The journalists, scholars, attorneys and national advocacy groups that filed the lawsuit said the illegal surveillance had disrupted their ability to communicate with sources and clients The appeals court based in Cincinnati dismissed the case because the plaintiffs could not state with certainty they had been wiretapped by the government's National Security Agency.

Administration lawyers opposed the appeal and said further review by the Supreme Court was unwarranted.

The Supreme Court sided with the administration and rejected the appeal without any comment.

(Reporting by James Vicini, editing by Lori Santos)

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I know I am not a learnered scholar or even a lawyer, but I am an old disabled infantryman and I know right from wrong. It is MY opinion that the Chief Justice Roberts Supreme Court has just given President Bush and VP Dick Cheney a free pass on the violation of American citizens rights to privacy. '
None of us loyal to the United States question the ability to chase terrorists, but let's see what we do know, Osama Bin ladin is alive and well in Pakistan, and President Bush and Cheney keep sending Musharaf billions in assistance, the recent "keep America Safe Act" was not threatened to be vetoed due to the law per se, rather the lack of the retro immunity Bush and Cheney were demanding for the laws they had already broken, saying that is they could stop the pending lawsuits for violating American citizens rights, the Telecoms would be facing billions in punitive damages, as they should be, some of the telecoms actually told Mr Bush and Cheney to go F themselves, where's the court orders? You know those nasty little legal requirements, we Americans are proud of, something we have had for more than 200 years.
We abolished the King in 1776, and when SCOTUS gave George W the election in 2000 they did not appoint him King George 2000. Regardless of what he and Tricky Dick 2 have decided, he is not the "decider in chief" the American public is the "decider in chief" and they are really pushing for impeachment, they make Nixon look like a nice man.

This is not what I served in an Army Uniform thru Vietnam and Desert Storm for, not do I think my father served in the 7th Calvary in 1914-1916 and went with General Black Jack Pershing after Pancho Villa for in 1916, nor my grandfather Joshua Eaton Bailey served the California 4th Volunteers from 1861 - 1865 to maintain the Union.
Nor my great great grandfather Bailey who served at Valley Forge with General Washington as a doctors assistant. They served this nation to make it a free country, and this administration has taken it back to as close to a kingdom as they can get, they have a Supreme Court that rubber stamps their law breaking, that will not let people tortured file law suits and they shut them down by claiming state secrets, hell the VP even got away with shooting a lawyer, where were the charges the rest of us would have been slapped with, illegal discharge of a firearm, failure to report a crime promptly, he didn't even bother telling the President until the next day. They don't think we have a right to know who visits the White House the national residence, it is not a home, it is the head of states place of business, we pay for it, we have the right to know who enters and when they leave. What about the missing or misplaced 5 million e mails they used the RNC routers and servers for to conduct legal business for the Executive Office President (EOP.gov) they have made Nixon look like a pure amatuer, Scooter Libby and the VP out a CIA agent and destroy a long term cover company used for detection of WMD and Scooter gets a get out of jail free card. This administration will go down in history as one of the worst and Justice Roberts is tying his name to the thuggery of Cheney and Company, is this his real desire? To be remembered as the Justice who allowed crime to flourish in the White House?

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