NSA warrantless surveillance cases arrive in Court...

Go to Wired News " NSA Case Becomes Lawyer Junket" for details of the 48 lawsuits and 24 lawyers assembled to consider against the US's largest telco's for willingly participating in warrantless Government surveillance of US citizens before Chief Judge Vaughn Walker in San Francisco.

AT & T lawyer Bradford Berenson raised a laugh when he said he can't know what to do until the appeals court rules on state secrets.

"I couldn't answer a complaint if a gun were put to my head," Berenson said.

"I don't know anything and don't have a security clearance."

Ho. Ho. Ho.

Very funny until you turn to his biography at his blue chip Washington firm,Sidley Austin Brown and Wood LLP. which states that from January 2001 (when the wire tapping - which the Gubment have admitted took place, started) through January 2003, Mr. Berenson served as Associate Counsel to the President of the United States. In the White House, he worked on a wide variety of legal, legislative and policy issues associated with the Bush Administration’s relations with Congress, its justice and domestic policy initiatives, and the war on terrorism. These included judicial selection, responses to congressional oversight and investigations, the USA Patriot Act, the Military Order authorizing the use of military commissions, detainee policy and anti-terrorism litigation, presidential action against terrorist financing, and the creation of the new Department of Homeland Security.

There is more here about how this adjunct fellow of the American Enterprise Institute worked with a tight knit team for Alberto Gonzalez on the legal status of "detainees" captured in the War on Terrorism, the validity (or otherwise) of the Geneva Conventions, and a new less stringent and curious legal definition of torture.

Berenson is also Co-founder of Citizens for the Common Defence, a shadowy group, whose members include Robert Bork and 23 other conservative lawyers and legal scholars, including several recent veterans of the White House counsel's office and the Justice Department. They act as Amicus Curiae or "Friends of the Court" and describe their interests in the case of Hamdi v Rumsfeld ...(PDF alert)

" Citizens for the Common Defence (“CCD”) is an association that advocates a conception of robust Executive Branch authority to meet the national security threats that confront the nation in its war against international terrorists.

The organization’s name derives from the Preamble to the Constitution, which recognizes that “to provide for the common defence” against foreign threats is one of the great objects of government our Constitution was meant to secure. Far from being inconsistent with “secur[ing] the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity,” the vigorous executive power necessary to defend our nation against foreign enemies was seen by the Framers as a vital precondition to securing those blessings and an integral part of the same libertarian enterprise."

There is more at Rasul v Bush.

It is fascinating to read these documents to consider the especial rigorous legal certitude (and bullshit) which these unfeeling litigous atomatons pick through the cracks of the law, hiding where required in the Constitution and playing fast and loose with international treaties and obligations.

...then you don't have to be smart to tell Monkey boy that as Commander in Chief he can strut about in his Bomber Jacket and do what he fucking well pleases.

More details at Cnet