Background on the domestic wiretapping debate

Finished teaching this (and the Hamdan case right before that) in my phl of law class a couple of days before the ruling came down. Here are some more resources. Fun reading, seriously.

The main letters from the DOJ justifying the program along with resposnses by an organization of lefties including Dworkin, Tribe, and David Cole.

David Cole arguing that the Hamdan decision is basically a rejection of Bush's assertion of Presidential power."Why the Court said No."

My humble opinion, the cout is saying "look congress, get off your asses and actually authorize something if you're going to authorize it. You might be up for reelection, but we're here for life." The claim never really goes beyond that. Though, interestingly, if you look at the War Crimes Act of 1996, which says that any violation of the Geneva conventions is a war crime that can be prosecuted in the United States, and read it together with the Hamdan decision, which does come out and say that the Military Tribunals had already violated Hamdan's Geneva Convention rights, you have a case for trying a big chunk of the administration for War Crimes. Now, if we can just find a prosecutor.


I haven't read this most recent court decision from the Detroit district court, so I don't know if she sites Hamdan or what.