It’s a shame that Jimmy Carter-appointee Anna Diggs Taylor saw fit to rule against a tool for defending citizens that has repeatedly proven successful… including this past week when thousands of innocent men, women and children were spared “The Big One“.

Let’s remember who the plaintiffs are in this case:

They include Noel Saleh, a man who has proudly admitted funding Hezbollah, Mohammed Abdrabboh, a Palestinian attorney who admits in this very lawsuit that he represents terrorism suspects (despite having sworn prior to the contrary), Nabih Ayad, whose friends “openly donated millions to HAMAS and privately raised money for Iraqi insurgents at a Los Angeles area fundraiser,” and Nazih Hassan, a member of a group founded with HAMAS money.

It’s interesting what these plaintiffs claimed about the surveillance program, too:

The ACLU filed the lawsuit in January on behalf of journalists, scholars and lawyers who say the program has made it difficult for them to do their jobs. They believe many of their overseas contacts are likely targets of the program, which monitors international phone calls and e-mails to or from the U.S. involving people the government suspects have terrorist links.

They “believe many of their overseas contacts are likely targets” of a program which monitors communications with people outside the U.S. suspected of having “terrorist links”? Well, no wonder they don’t want the government to know what they’re saying or plotting.

The ACLU says the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which set up a secret court to grant warrants for such surveillance, gave the government enough tools to monitor suspected terrorists.

In 1978, the 32-bit VAX systems were the industry standard (only being used by large institutions), and cell phones were used by less than 500 people around the world. A law established in that year to regulate the “electronic surveillance and physical search of persons engaged in espionage or international terrorism against the United States on behalf of a foreign power” is outdated in this day and age of instant messaging, disposable cell phones and an enemy who’s repeatedly tried to exploit our security gaps in furtherance of their declared goal to kill us all. Asking investigators to jump through hoops that could take hours or days when a lead could go cold in less than an hour is dangerous.

Opponents of this security program (which is supported by over 60% of Americans) paint it as a system designed by George W. Bush and a few buddies on the golf course in an attempt to install a fascist dictatorship in America. What they fail to acknowledge is the oversight of this system includes it being periodically reviewed by Congress (including Democrats like Nancy Pelosi).

To say nothing of what 5 former FISA judges have said about the program:

…a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act does not override the president’s constitutional authority to spy on suspected international agents under executive order.

“If a court refuses a FISA application and there is not sufficient time for the president to go to the court of review, the president can under executive order act unilaterally, which he is doing now,” said Judge Allan Kornblum, magistrate judge of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida and an author of the 1978 FISA Act. “I think that the president would be remiss exercising his constitutional authority by giving all of that power over to a statute.”

So bottom line, this case is about Carter appointee incorrectly ruling on an ACLU-concocted lawsuit on behalf of admitted anti-American terrorist sympathizers challenging a type of program that has succeeded in thwarting massive terror plots on multiple occasions, claiming the President is wilfully breaking the law, despite the program having Congressional oversight and overwhelming support in the Justice Department, the legal community and the American public.

While our minimum wage airport security officials are focusing on shaving cream and toothpaste, the terrorists are being handed a gaping loophole in security by the liberal Left and their terror-loving “plaintiffs”.

Thanks.

Others:
Old Soldier wants to thank the ACLU for being so helpful… to terrorists.
Confederate Yankee correctly identifies one of the ACLU’s tactics in securing this bad judgment… forum shopping.
“The Great One” weighs in.
Volokh analyzes the decision.

Even the woman who sat in the defendant’s chair, having undisputedly murdered each one of her children with her own bare hands, reacted as if to say, “Holy crap, they bought that insanity gig?!?”

Talk about your all-time cases of injustice. This case ought to shine a gigantic spotlight on the travesty of justice that is the “insanity plea”.

Yates’ attorneys never disputed that she drowned 6-month-old Mary, 2-year-old Luke, 3-year-old Paul, 5-year-old John and 7-year-old Noah in their Houston-area home in June 2001. But they said she suffered from severe postpartum psychosis and, in a delusional state, believed Satan was inside her and was trying to save them from hell.

Get that? NEVER DISPUTED… It was never even an issue as to whether she knowingly filled her bathtub full of water before systematically chasing each child around the house, dragging them into the bathroom (some fighting for their lives) and holding their innocent little heads under the water under the precious life left their tiny bodies. NEVER FRIGGIN’ DISPUTED

But yet we held not one, but two trials in her honor. Andrea Yates committed what could be deemed as arguably the most heinous crime imaginable, killing her own child… and she systematically committed it FIVE TIMES… and the message from yesterday’s verdict is that murderers shouldn’t worry about serving jail time so long as they can convince a jury they had a really bad day.

And now Andrea Yates is finding the American justice system offering her the mercy she denied her own flesh and blood… and someday in the future, she may walk free to do it all over again.

The 42-year-old will be committed to a state mental hospital, with periodic hearings before a judge to determine whether she should be released. If convicted of murder, she would have faced life in prison.

Life in prison ought to be the minimum she faces. But no, thanks to the insanity defense, she may soon be able to walk right back out into public and procreate again. It’s not so much the insanity defense that’s the problem, as much as it is the liberal application of it in many cases. It seems to be the fallacy of circular argument whereby the argument goes like this: Only someone out of their mind could think about killing their own children, thus since she killed her own children, she must’ve been out of her mind. Therefore, Andrea Yates’ crime was so outrageous that it inherently came with a built-in defense to escape punishment.

And while I feel terrible for the psycho’s husband, Rusty, I was disappointed to read his reaction to the verdict, saying it was the right decision, and then lashing out at the prosecutors who sought justice for his murdered children.

Rusty Yates lashed out Thursday at prosecutors who spent five years pursuing murder charges against his ex-wife, saying they misrepresented certain details of the day Andrea Yates drowned their five children.

Who cares? For the sake of argument, let’s toss out every single “misrepresentation” made by prosecutors, and focus on a single, completely undisputed fact: Andrea Yates drowned her five children. Period.

Apparently I missed the right to bear boxsprings in the Constitution.