Friday, August 18, 2006

Follow-up to liberal judge's ruling on surveillance: legal standing ignored?

In legal terms, "standing" is where you actually have a direct legal stake in the outcome of a court case. For example, I cannot sue OJ Simpson in court for the wrongful deaths of Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman because I have no standing in the case. I'm not related to them, and I don't even know them. Ron Goldman's father did indeed have standing, so he did sue OJ. If you have no standing, the case is to be dismissed.

Anyway, as a follow-up to my post yesterday about ruling from the liberal judge appointed by Jimmy the Dhimmi Carter, there comes this bit of legal analysis that I hadn't considered. From FNC via Newsbusters:
On FNC's Special Report with Brit Hume, correspondent Bret Baier mentioned that Judge Taylor was a Carter appointee, and the show also gave attention to the debate over whether the plaintiffs in the case had standing to file their lawsuit. During the Fox All Stars segment, Fortune Magazine's Nina Easton talked about feedback she had received that the "legal reasoning on it was thin," and addressed the issue of standing: "And this question of the standing of these folks you're talking about, the scholars and the journalists and so on, and whether they actually had standing to bring this suit, well, she [Judge Taylor] wrestled with some of those questions, but then she dismissed the other concerns, saying, well, if they don't have standing, then who's going to keep the President, who's going to keep the President, hold his feet to the fire and who's going to let courts come in and hold him accountable? It's like, well, I gotta give him standing, and so I thought that was extremely telling."
That's why it appears even more likely that the b#tch's ruling is destined to be overturned: the plaintiffs had no legal standing. Their calls and e-mails hadn't been monitored by the feds, so they didn't have standing. The most basic requirement for a case to be heard by a judge, and the stupid woman botched it. Actually, "botched" implies a mistake, so allow me to correct it to "ignored"! The ruling can be overturned on the standing issue alone, without even ruling on the constitutionality of the surveillance program. It can be, but only time will tell if it will be.