April 01, 2010 FOX News
Heather: In one of the few sane segments you're ever going to find on the Glenn Beck Show, Naomi Wolf talks to Beck fill-in Napolitano about where we're headed if we don't have more cases like this one.
Judge: Warrantless Wiretaps Were Illegal:
The National Security Agency's program to spy on Americans without warrants was illegal, a federal judge ruled Wednesday. The ruling by Judge Vaughn Walker (PDF) was a win for civil libertarians, and a major victory for the plaintiffs in this case, Al-Haramain, an Islamic charity that was wiretapped, along with its lawyers, in 2004.
Groups like the ACLU and the Electronic Frontier Foundation have tried out numerous legal strategies in a years-long effort to challenge the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping program. The Al-Haramain case represents the first time that plaintiffs who claim they were wiretapped have been able to get around the so-called "state secrets" clause, which acts as a sort of "get-out-of-court-free" card for the government in many national security cases. Al-Haramain's win could be temporary, though: the Obama administration will almost certainly appeal the decision. (Update: Marcy Wheeler disagrees.) Read on...
