http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/analysis/091Federal Judge OKs Law Signed by Bush Even Though the House Never Voted on It. We Need a Real Judiciary Again
Submitted by BuzzFlash on Mon, 08/14/2006 - 3:19pm. Analysis
A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS
Last Friday, Federal District Judge John D. Bates conducted yet another feeble judicial capitulation to the Bush Administration when he ruled that it was acceptable for the president to sign a bill that had not been passed by Congress.
As many BuzzFlash readers may recall, a clerical error created a $2 billion discrepancy between two versions of the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005, which each respectively passed the House and Senate by the slimmest of margins. The mistake was quickly identified, but Bush rushed to sign the stingier copy - which cut two years off of Medicare coverage for certain medical equipment - despite being warned in advance that the bill he was about to approve had only been voted on by one half of Congress.
This isn't the first time Judge Bates has demonstrated his partisan agenda in a courtroom. As a deputy to Whitewater prosecutor Ken Starr during the 1990s, Bates helped override executive privilege to secure evidence from the Clintons. As one of Bush's early federal court selections not long afterwards, he ruled that Tricky Dick Cheney didn't have to reveal to congressional investigators who was on his energy task force or what they did because of executive privilege. Last year Bates refused relief for Omar Khadr, a Canadian citizen captured in Afghanistan at the age of 15 and sent to Guantanamo Bay as an "enemy combatant," who simply wanted to stop interrogation techniques such as beatings, threats of rape, and the use of his body as a "human mop" to wipe urine off the floor (Bates said this "would present a grave risk to the public interest"). Bates also ruled that the recording industry could acquire the names of online music downloaders from internet service providers, although his decision was later overturned on appeal.
To his credit, Bates did stand up to the White House once, demanding that they make some response to credible allegations that Ahmed Abu Ali, an American citizen, was being held in Saudi Arabia on Bush's behalf in order use torture to extract a confession. When they were unable to do so (they never even tried), Ali was finally extradited and tried in an American court with most of his rights. Nevertheless, this may have been an instance when illegalities were so egregious that Bates was unable to look the other way, and its unclear how little of an explanation he would have accepted in order to leave Ali to rot oversees as he did to Khadr.
It's still probably a safe bet that Bates is otherwise onboard with the Bush agenda. After all, Chief Justice Roberts quietly appointed him to the secret United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court last Febuary - nobody else knew until someone noticed Bates' online biography had been updated with the information a month later. Unfortunately, Bates took the old spot of Judge James Robertson, who quit in protest after it was revealed Bush had been bypassing the court to eavesdrop on U.S. citizens without warrants.
THERE'S A LITTLE MORE--WORTH READING!
A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS
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