An article at Findlaw.com discusses today’s news: a federal judge in Michigan has ruled that the Bush Administration’s warrantless wiretapping program is unconstitutional and violates numerous federal laws.

Today’s decision is a powerful and sweeping indictment of the Bush Administration’s practice of ignoring laws and the Constitution when it doesn’t suit their vision of what presidential power is. The decision of the judge focuses on the fact that there are laws governing how to get wiretaps, and the Bush Administration has brazenly and willfully ignored them.

The judge also rejected the administration’s claim that the case should be thrown out because it involves “state secrets.” In rejecting that claim, the judge pointed out that she didn’t need to see a single secret thing to review whether they’d followed applicable laws and constitutional processes.

Attorney General and torture memo guy, Alberto Gonzales, said in a press conference today that he had documents in his office safe that would show why the warrantless wiretapping is both necessary and legal. As my friend and old law school prof Jonathan Turley said tonight on Countdown: “Unless he’s got a federal authorizing statute in that safe, it’s irrelevant.”

Here are some juicy quotes from the decision, as reported by CNN.com :

The defendants “are permanently enjoined from directly or indirectly utilizing the Terrorist Surveillance Program in any way, including, but not limited to, conducting warrantless wiretaps of telephone and Internet communications, in contravention of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and Title III,” she wrote.

She declared that the program “violates the separation of powers doctrine, the Administrative Procedures Act, the First and Fourth amendments to the United States Constitution, the FISA and Title III.”

Her ruling went on to say that “the president of the United States … has undisputedly violated the Fourth in failing to procure judicial orders.”

The decision can be read here.

Of course the Bush Administration is appealing the decision.

History often repeats itself, especially when idiots fail to learn from it. So after reading this article on CNN today, I’m counting the hours till I see a court case titled “Loving v. Black Jack.”

The AP wire story says:

The [Black Jack, Missouri] City Council has rejected a measure allowing unmarried couples with multiple children to live together, and the mayor said those who fall into that category could soon face eviction.

Olivia Shelltrack and Fondrey Loving were denied an occupancy permit after moving into a home in this St. Louis suburb because they have three children and are not married.

What caught my eye was the last name, Loving. That name is well known to civil rights attorneys… indeed to any attorney who didn’t sleep through Constitutional Law class. Loving v. Virginia is one in a long line of aptly named lawsuits, a landmark 1967 civil rights case in which Virginia’s ban on mixed race marriages was declared unconstitutional.

How could the nitwits in Black Jack, MO, be so silly… this kind of bald-faced symmetry just won’t work in Hollywood. It’s too trite. I mean, come on! Maybe their twist will be that Black Jack will sue them to evict Loving and it can be Black Jack v. Loving. Or maybe a different plaintiff… somebody named Bumpkin? Yes… the Bigoted Bumpkins of Black Jack v. Loving has a nice ring to it.

My Bible tells me it was the evil Roman Empire who used torture to oppress those sharing truth and knowledge. The evil Soviet Empire built gulags to torture and oppress those seeking truth and justice too. Now we learn that the Bush Administration is using former Soviet gulags as secret torture prisons?

Do these twits not understand irony? Actually, irony isn’t the right word. What is the word for something that is ironic, appalling, immoral, unconscionable, and may even border on crimes against humanity? The closest term I can think of is: the official policy promoted by Vice President Cheney.

The hubris, the unmitigated and unbridled gall of Dick “I had other priorities than serving during Vietnam” Cheney going to the U.S. Senate and fighting against a bill written by torture victim John McCain. It really takes some balls to stand before McCain and say that torture should be a legitimate option for interrogating terrorists.

Well, if the Vice President does have such durable testicles, perhaps they might come in handy to prove a point. If our esteemed vice-leader truly thinks torture is useful and in the best interests of the United States, it would be an interesting experiment to have a CIA interrogator drop by the Veep’s office and show him how easy it is to get bad intelligence through torture.

My bet is that if someone attached some electrodes to Mr. Cheney’s testicles, he’d give up every secret he had, confess to the Natalie Holloway murder, and offer to to do Rockette kicks while singing “Happy Days are Here Again”… all before a single volt is ever applied. I’m guessing this because it’s my theory that only cowards would prescribe torture.

Yes, I’m saying that the Vice President is what folks down in Texas would call a “yellow-bellied sum-bitch.” And if the President thinks torture is acceptable, then he’s one too.

Sorry my argument isn’t more fleshed out… still kinda flabbergasted by the brazen obscenity of our country’s leadership.

Merriam-Webster’s Online Dictionary says:

obsequious (&b-’sE-kwE-&s), (adj.): marked by or exhibiting a fawning attentiveness

For example:

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — U.S. Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers told George W. Bush in a 1997 birthday card that he was “the best governor ever” and, in a separate note to her boss, said she hoped his twin daughters recognize their parents are “cool.”

In Federalist Paper # 76, Alexander Hamilton (writing as “Publius”) discusses the Senate confirmation process and how it serves as a check on unrestrained presidential power. In doing so, he explains:

To what purpose then require the co-operation of the Senate? [ . . . ] It would be an excellent check upon a spirit of favoritism in the President, and would tend greatly to prevent the appointment of unfit characters from State prejudice, from family connection, from personal attachment, or from a view to popularity. [ . . . ] He would be both ashamed and afraid to bring forward, for the most distinguished or lucrative stations, candidates who had no other merit than that of coming from the same State to which he particularly belonged, or of being in some way or other personally allied to him, or of possessing the necessary insignificance and pliancy to render them the obsequious instruments of his pleasure. [emphasis added]

Unfortunately, President Bush has shown that he feels no shame when doing the most blatantly self-indulgent and ill-advised things. But Hamilton and the other framers saw forward to the kind of corrupt leadership that could arise and wrote decisively some 217 years ago that Bush should “be both ashamed and afraid” to nominate his unqualified former personal lawyer to the highest court in the land. And any Senators who vote for her should be similarly ashamed.

Nothing against her personally… I’m sure she’s a nice lady and she may even be a competent corporate lawyer. But the court needs constitutional scholars, not people who are, in Hamilton’s words, “personally allied to” the president, who lack the personal experience and gravitas necessary to prevent them from becoming “the obsequious instruments of his pleasure.”