O'Reilly falsely claimed ACLU lawsuit against warrantless wiretapping tried "to overcome" congressional statute
SUMMARY: Bill O'Reilly falsely asserted that the ACLU's lawsuit over the Bush administration's warrantless domestic wiretapping program "was basically an attempt ... to try to overcome a law which was passed by Congress, through the courts." In fact, the ACLU's lawsuit claimed, in part, that the program was in violation of several, as O'Reilly put it, "law[s] ... passed by Congress," including the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, and asked that the courts enforce those laws by ordering the program shut down.
On the February 19 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor, host Bill O'Reilly falsely asserted that the American Civil Liberties Union's (ACLU) lawsuit over the National Security Agency's (NSA) warrantless domestic wiretapping program "was basically an attempt ... to try to overcome a law which was passed by Congress, through the courts." In fact, the reverse is true: The ACLU's lawsuit claimed, in part, that the then-operational NSA program was in violation of several, as O'Reilly put it, "law[s] ... passed by Congress," including the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA), and asked that the courts enforce those laws by ordering the program shut down.
As Circuit Judge Alice Batchelder wrote in her July 6, 2007, opinion dismissing the case for lack of standing:
The plaintiffs filed suit in the Eastern District of Michigan, seeking a permanent injunction against the NSA's continuation of the [Terrorist Surveillance Program (TSP)] and a declaration that two particular aspects of the TSP -- warrantless wiretapping and data mining -- violate the First and Fourth Amendments, the Separation of Powers Doctrine, the Administrative Procedures Act ("APA"), Title III of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act ("Title III"), and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act ("FISA").
Earlier on February 19 the Supreme Court declined to review the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit's dismissal of the ACLU's lawsuit. FISA was not mentioned during O'Reilly's discussion of the case with his guest, Fox anchor Megyn Kelly, during the segment, titled "Is it legal?"
Currently, FISA requires that the government, under most circumstances, obtain a warrant to eavesdrop on communications either intercepted in the United States or acquired by intentionally targeting the communications of a particular, known U.S. person who is in the United States. On January 17, 2007, then-Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales announced that the Bush administration would not reauthorize the warrantless domestic wiretapping program and had received authorization from the FISA Court to conduct surveillance within its jurisdiction. The Bush administration did not, however, abandon the argument that it has the authority to conduct warrantless wiretaps despite Congress' prohibitions. Thus, contrary to O'Reilly's claim, it is the White House -- not the ACLU -- that has sought to "overcome a law which was passed by Congress."
From the February 19 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor:
O'REILLY: Now, the appeals court, the 6th Circuit, said that you can't, ACLU, produce any victims here. That was the --
KELLY: Right.
O'REILLY: -- crux of the matter, right?
KELLY: And that's the problem. If the ACLU knows this, it's like first-year law student fodder, when you learn that you have to have what's called standing in order to bring a lawsuit. You have to be injured. You have to prove injury to yourself. We don't allow people who don't --
O'REILLY: And they couldn't come up with anybody who was injured.
KELLY: Right. And they say, "Hey, look, that's not our fault, because the government keeps it secret who they're wiretapping and who they're not." Well, that's the law. We don't generally reveal our national security facts to anybody for the asking.
O'REILLY: Right. And so it was basically an attempt to embarrass the Bush administration and to try to overcome a law which was passed by Congress, through the courts, which is what the ACLU does all the time.
"You have to prove injury to yourself...."
"And they couldn't come up with anybody who was injured."
Because THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION WON'T REVEAL WHO WAS!!!!!
'Injured' in this case meaning having your Fourth Amendment rights trampled on.
So, in other words, no one has the standing to find out if the government has secretly gathered information about them that otherwise would have required the government to first obtain a warrant to obtain. Nice...
But, hey, I'm sure we can trust Cheney and his merry band of miscreants.
Bill got one part right for once, but he was trying to be insulting with it. The ACLU does indeed often take up cases to get legislation struck down in the courts. In fact that is one of their primary causes because they exist to preserve our constitutional rights and one of the battlegrounds in that fight is the courtroom.
Just because a legislative body passes a law does not mean it conforms to the standards of the constitution. That's one of the functions of the judicial branch, to remove improper laws. It's not "judicial activism." It's doing their job.
Bill O'Reilly's show has been "basically an attempt" to convince the American public that anything Republican comes directly from the hand of God and anything that isn't is just plain EVIL.
It appears that the wiggle room for Billy is that the "law" in question has to do with standing, not with FISA.
However, the proper position should be squirming, not wiggling.
First, the statement "they couldn't come up with anybody who was injured" is patently misleading, implying as it does there was no injury. What the court said was that they hadn't been able to prove that any of the plaintiffs were injured, which is different both in that it does not deny the possibility of injury to other parties and that if actually does not even deny the possibility of injury to the plaintiffs, only that none had been shown.
Second, as I understand it, "standing" is a judicial principle, not a law, although laws may make reference to it.
Third, if courts want to give plaintiffs standing they can always find a way to do it. In this case, one of the arguments was that some of the plaintiffs, who were attorneys, had been harmed in their ability to communicate with their clients because of concerns over wiretapping. If the court wanted to, it easily could have used that to declare that at least those plaintiffs have standing.
Fourth, it's worth noting that of the four judges involved - the original judge and the three-judge appeal panel - only two actually commented on the NSA wiretapping program at issue and both said it was clearly illegal.
Which makes the decision doubly creepy because it essentially puts the Sixth Circuit in the position of knowingly shielding illegal activity by use of a technicality. Isn't that the kind of stuff the wingers usually screech about?
Thanks, Larrye,pretty clear rundown of the "reality based" angle.The point has been made by other posters, but this quote is pretty remarkable;
KELLY: Right. And they say, "Hey, look, that's not our fault, because the government keeps it secret who they're wiretapping and who they're not." Well, that's the law. We don't generally reveal our national security facts to anybody for the asking.
So, she's framed it as making excuses, and in the next sentence, admits that those "excuses" are the truth, but gives the bedwetters a national security excuse for why the excuses are not valid.
That's a lotta BS packed into a couple sentences. I salute her.
SAVE DEMOCRACY, VOTE FOR A DEMOCRAT!!
Definition of a Republican view of Civil Liberties: "Retro-Active Blind Immunity" for telecoms that violated ALL OF AMERICA'S privacy in their pursuit of the distruction of our 4th Amendment Right to Privacy.
Megyn Kelly, an pretty face, a spunky voice, a 'legal expert?' Why would a News Network put this woman up as expertise on this constitutional question? Where is the attorney, judge, or even law student?
"How low can you go?" replaces "Fair and Balanced."
Happy Thoughts;
Dan Grady