Looney Liberal of the Week: Anna Diggs Taylor

DETROIT, MI -- This week's award goes to U.S. District Court Judge Anna Diggs Taylor of the Eastern District of Michigan, for her ruling on Thursday that the NSA Terrorist Surveillance Program ("TSP") is unconstitutional. Seeing as how she has few details on the program, she has been forced to render her opinion on the basis of hearsay, assumption, and political ideology. Her ruling is short on brilliance and long on ranting. The following quote is from an editorial in the Washington Post on Friday, which you can read in its entirety HERE...

[T]he decision yesterday by a federal district court in Detroit, striking down the NSA's program, is neither careful nor scholarly, and it is hard-hitting only in the sense that a bludgeon is hard-hitting. The angry rhetoric of U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor will no doubt grab headlines. But as a piece of judicial work -- that is, as a guide to what the law requires and how it either restrains or permits the NSA's program -- her opinion will not be helpful...

Judge Taylor said the TSP, which was created after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, is unconstitutional because it violates the separation of powers doctrine, as well as the First and Fourth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution. Taylor is apparently not a constitutional scholar, as she seems to have forgotten that the President is the Commander-In-Chief ("C-I-C"), and during a time of war has exceptionally broad powers to "provide for the common defence". Specifically, the C-I-C has full authority to gather intelligence concerning foreign powers which threaten our "domestic tranquility". As C-I-C, the President directs the military, the members of which take the following oath...

I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic

The President then (as C-I-C), directs all military efforts to "defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic". The NSA TSP is a military program directed at "enemies" which may be either foreign or domestic. For more info on Presidential Authority to conduct warrantless foreign intelligence surveillance, click HERE.

Taylor claims that the First Amendment is violated by the program, because it hampers journalists, scholars, lawyers and others trying to speak to sources overseas. That is simply nonsensical. The NSA program in no way hampers anyone in the United States from speaking to people overseas who are involved in discussing legitimate business or family matters. If it hampers any communication at all, it hampers only "illegitimate" or "questionable" communication, and in my opinion, that's a good thing.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson was the first to use the phrase "The Constitution is not a suicide pact" in 1949. Never more did such words apply to a legal case than to this one. According to Anna Diggs Taylor, it is more important to preserve the rights of terrorists and those who would communicate with them "unhampered", than to prevent the needless deaths of thousands of innocent American civilians. Presumably, in her opinion, the Constitution IS "a suicide pact". In her view, we must be prepared to commit suicide in order to protect the rights of foreign terrorists and their agents in this country above those of average American citizens. Either that, or she's just another partisan hack trying to use her influence to attack the Administration from the bench. Idiot!

Judge Anna Dodo-Taylor ought to go back to school for a refresher course in Constitutional Law.