Oh, there is just so much to cover tonight. You've got your work cut out for yourself, though. The bulk of the reading will be found by following the links. And I assure you, you're gonna want that cowbell!
- Let's start with an op-ed by law professor Ann Althouse (yes, that Ann Althouse) in today's NY Times, discussing the nearly incoherent opinion of Judge Anna Diggs Taylor in ACLU vs NSA. (hat tip: Scott Johnson)
This, of course, is the most basic question in constitutional law, the one addressed in Marbury v. Madison. The public may have become so used to the notion that a judge’s word is what counts that it forgets why this is true. The judges have this constitutional power only because they operate by a judicial method that restricts them to resolving concrete controversies and requires them to interpret the relevant constitutional and statutory texts and to reason within the tradition of the case law.
This system works only if the judges suppress their personal and political willfulness and take on the momentous responsibility to embody the rule of law. They should not reach out for opportunities to make announcements of law, but handle the real cases that have been filed.
[...]
If the words of the written opinion reveal that the judge did not follow the discipline of the judicial process, what sense does it make to take the judge’s word about what the law means over the word of the president?
Outstanding. The point being, if the opinion of a judge - any judge - on legal interpretation is to take precedence over the opinion of another legal officer, perhaps the Attorney General, then the judge must follow proper procedure to arrive at the decision - be sure the plaintiffs have standing, and that they have an actual, not hypothethical grievance, and cite pertinent case and constitutional precedent and support a reasoned decision without prejudice. It does not appear that Ms. Diggs Taylor has done so.
- Let's move on to another long piece, most of which you can read at Protein Wisdom, discussing the Bush Doctrine: dead or alive? Lengthy excerpts from a long Norman Podhoretz article on OpinionJournal.com ensue. A taste from the article:
In thus promising to "pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism," the president touched on the third pillar on which the Bush Doctrine was built: the determination to take pre-emptive action against an anticipated attack. But it was only three months later, in his State of the Union Address on Jan. 29, 2002, that he made this determination fully explicit:
I will not wait on events, while dangers gather. I will not stand by, as peril draws closer and closer. The United States of America will not permit the world's most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world's most destructive weapons.
Here it is important to note what, for better or worse, the president did not say. He did not say--as almost everyone imagines he did--that he would act unilaterally, or that he would pay no attention to the opinions of our allies, or that he would ignore the U.N. Nor did he say--as would later mendaciously be charged in the relentless campaign to prove that he had "hyped" the danger posed by Saddam Hussein--that the threat had to be "imminent" before pre-emptive action could legitimately be taken. Nor did he use that word a few months later when, in the next major address he devoted to the Bush Doctrine, he restated the same point:
If we wait for threats to fully materialize, we will have waited too long. . . . The war on terror will not be won on the defensive. We must take the battle to the enemy, disrupt his plans, and confront the worst threats before they emerge.
It's long, so take your time and absorb it all.
- "Axis of Evil" expansion franchise Syria objects to UN troops patrolling the border with Lebanon. That might prevent them from rearming Hezbollah.
Syria — a Hezbollah benefactor largely left out of diplomacy during the 34-day war — appeared to insert itself Wednesday.
Syrian President Bashar Assad called any deployment of multinational troops along his border a "hostile" affront to Syria.
"First, this means creating hostile conditions between Syria and Lebanon," Assad told Dubai Television in an interview aired Wednesday. "Second, it is a hostile move toward Syria and naturally it will create problems."
And re-arming Hezbollah is not a hostile move? President Assad misunderstands, I think. The UN and Lebanese troops are not being deployed to prevent Israel from attacking Lebanon. They are being deployed to prevent Hezbollah from attacking Israel. Those troops have shied away from actively disarming the terror group, but reventing arms shipments to Hezbollah is certainly part of the job.
- They're alive, for now at least. The Fox News journalist Steve Centanni and his cameraman, Olaf Wiig have shown up on a videotape. The US has said it will not be negotiating with terrorists, appropriately so. The perpetrators are a previously unknown terrorist group in Gaza, and they're demanding prisoner releases. Keeping the duo in my prayers.
- Wow. That is one long and impressive bit of photo sleuthery, Zombie. And yet another example of MSM naivete. (hat tip: Allah)
