While he was on it, the FISCt also tried to rule in favor of keeping some kind of limits on the Executive doing the things you are writing about in your FISA posts too (In re Sealed Case). Unfortunately, there the failings of the FISCt system, with the FISA appellate court being able to “overrule” with no advocate being able to really argue the case against the phalanx of DOJ lawyers, and with a resulting, almost incomprehensible ruling whose dicta has been used support the kind of things we are seeing now and whose ruling could not be appealed (bc the party in interest defendant was never before the court to start with) – - it’s a mess that needs work.

But instead Congress has diligently gone to work to make more of a mess. And when Congress was offering up the DOJ playbook on how horribly difficult and time consuming it was to try to get a FISCt warrant, Lamberth went out on a limb and, even though Congress did not call him to testify, he made sure it went into the public venue, via some speeches, that he granted FISCt warrants from his car, by phone, as circumstances required, and had been roused in the wee hours of the morning to grant one as well.

He even went further and said that as Chief Justice, briefed on “teh program” he had seen both George Bush’s way and FISA’s way, and FISA was better. And the Democrats in Congress still studiously avoided having him appear to testify, even in closed session. Lamberth has been the kind of Judge you are forced to respect, even when you don’t always agree. He’s a judge who believes in the Constitution and believes that lawyers have to be bound by their code of ethics AND by the law, and he’s not too afraid of the neocon machine to put consequences on the table for lawyers who treat his courtroom like a shell game kiosk at a low rent county fair.

“As people do better, they start voting like Republicans – unless they have too much education and vote Democratic, which proves there can be too much of a good thing.”

Karl Rove.

“If they were to do real investigations we would see several significant high level criminal prosecutions in this country. And that is something that they are not going to let out. And, believe me; they will do everything to cover this up.”

-Sibel Edmonds, former FBI translator