ew’s post is both timely and correct, but insufficient as to its singularity.
Taken one at a time, each of the eleven questions posed by Judge Walker are “good”; and he could have posed dozens, even hundreds more, each as “good”, and still not exhaust the subject. More from most, perhaps all of us here could be just as “good”, and maybe some better, without any regard to whether or not each of us might feel obliged to preface the same with “IANAL”. Considered together Judge Walker’s questions are quite heady stuff; but, again, many here could do as well, and some perhaps even better.

Why? It’s the subject matter: The more one considers the nature of the claims, the wording in the FISA immunity bill, the words in the Constitution, in particular the 4th Amendment, the nature of rule under law, and the purpose for which the 3 different branches of the government exist, the more difficult it becomes to accept that Congress could come up with ANY bill that properly disposes of these claims.

Note in particular that Judge Walker gave the lawyers involved in the hearing the impression that he has not even read AG Mukasey’s “certifications”, so much so that the government lawyer appears to have made a special point of reading to him that part of the bill that superficially appears to ‘oblige’ him to read it. I cannot believe that is anything other than deliberate on Judge Walker’s part; further, I would expect nothing will happen to compel him to read it, at least before the Obama inauguration and until a designee of the Obama-appointed AG appears in his court and is able to satisfy him that he must.

I don’t suggest this holds true for all judges, but I am convinced that there a lot of judges out there who are quite looking forward to finally being able to fence with a president who is a constitutional lawyer and lecturer at a real law school, albeit by proxy, as opposed to dealing with the lawyers representing a nitwit with a mandate.

What William Ockham posted at 39 is so, and thus the progressive and liberal parts of the blogosphere have an opportunity to play a part in what the Obama administration’s DOJ lawyer will say next to Judge Walker – including, but by no means restricted to, as suggested, pushing questions on Senator Leahy and others on the Senate Judiciary Committee [others, of course, would include Senator Whitehouse].

One ‘voice’ that we can’t expect to hear in the ’sphere is Professor Marty Lederman, lately of Balkinization, and now “rumored” to have gone to ground pending the completion of the vetting process for his return to the DOJ OLC – which is not to say he’s lost his voice.

What particularly eases this task is that Judge Walker in essence is saying to all of us: I’m not looking at anything that isn’t readily available to each of you.

I’m not saying that an Obama Administration would flip on the FISA Immunity issue, but it would surely make for some interesting drama in public view.

He has been unorthodox as a judge, requiring law firms to bid for the status of lead counsel in securities class-action suits and publicly calling for legalization of drugs.

His rulings have overturned San Francisco’s voter-approved limits on bank ATM fees, dismissed a slave-labor suit against Japanese companies by former World War II prisoners of war and allowed reporters to watch all stages of lethal injection executions. He dismissed a suit by anti-logging protesters whose eyes were swabbed with liquid pepper spray, a decision later overturned by an appeals court; and approved Hearst Corp.’s purchase of The Chronicle, despite Walker’s reservations about the Justice Department’s antitrust review.

i’m hereby suspending my commenting privileges for the day.