http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2...03.shtml?s=icp

Thursday, March 30, 2006 12:01 a.m. EST

FISA Judge: Bush Wiretapping Broke No Law

In a significant vindication for President Bush, a judge who
co-authored the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act said
Tuesday that the president was duly authorized under the Constitution
to order the wiretapping of suspected terrorists - without getting a
warrant from the FISA Court.

Testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee, former FISA Court
Judge Allan Kornblum said that president's Constitutional powers
supersede the FISA law, which critics claim the Bush program violated.

"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
Kornblum, in quotes picked up by the Washington Times.

Kornblum, who supervised Justice Department wiretap applications to
the FISA court for years, is now a magistrate judge of the U.S.
District Court for the Northern District of Florida.

estifying along with four other former FISA Court judges, Judge
Kornblum suggested that it would have been irresponsible for Bush to
have deferred to the FISA Court.

"I think that the president would be remiss exercising his
constitutional authority by giving all of that power over to a
statute," the FISA author said.

While the Washington Times said Kornblum's testimony indicated that
the Bush surveillance program did not violate the law, other media
outlets interpreted the judges' comments differently.

On the same concept of inherent constitutional authority, the
Associated Press quoted Kornblum as saying: "I am very wary of
inherent authority . . . It sounds very much like King George."

The AP didn't mention the FISA author's other remarks about Bush
having the power to "act unilaterally."

The New York Times also failed to find vindication for Bush in
Kornblum's words, reporting instead that the FISA judges "voiced
skepticism at a Senate hearing about the president's constitutional
authority to order wiretapping on Americans without a court order."

Instead of Kornblum, the Times focused on the opinion of former FISA
Judge Harold A. Baker, who said the president was bound by the law
"like everyone else."

If a law like the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is duly
enacted by Congress and considered constitutional, "'the president
ignores it at the president's peril," Baker insisted.

The other FISA judges who testified before the committee were Stanley
Brotman of Camden, NJ; John Keenan of the southern district of New
York City; and William Stafford of Pensacola, Fla.
"The best government is a benevolent tyranny tempered
by an occasional assassination." --Voltaire