Selectively edited for effect. http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/storie...ME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2013-02-26-10-10-24 WASHINGTON (AP) -- A sharply-divided Supreme Court on Tuesday threw out an attempt by U.S. citizens to challenge the expansion of a surveillance law used to monitor conversations of foreign spies and terrorist suspects. With a 5-4 vote, the high court ruled that a group of American lawyers, journalists and organizations can't sue to challenge the 2008 expansion of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) because they can't prove that the government will monitor their conversations along with those of potential foreign terrorist and intelligence targets. The outcome was the first in the current Supreme Court term to divide along ideological lines, with the conservative justices prevailing. Justices "have been reluctant to endorse standing theories that require guesswork," said Justice Samuel Alito, who wrote for the court's majority. Without proof that the law would directly affect them, Americans can't sue, Alito said in the ruling. Alito also said the FISA expansion merely authorizes, but does not mandate or direct, the government monitoring. Because of that, he said, "respondents' allegations are necessarily conjectural. Simply put, respondents can only speculate as to how the attorney general and the Director of National Intelligence will exercise their discretion in determining which communications to target." A federal judge originally threw out the lawsuit, saying the plaintiffs lacked standing to sue. But the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated the lawsuit. The Supreme Court was not considering the constitutionality of the expansion, only whether lawyers could file a lawsuit to challenge it in federal court. Alito re-emphasized that point, saying the decision did not insulate the FISA expansion from judicial review, and he suggested a couple of ways a challenge could be brought to court, including a scenario in which an American lawyer actually did get swept up in FISA monitoring. "It is possible that the monitoring of the target's conversations with his or her attorney would provide grounds for a claim of standing on the part of the attorney," Alito said. "Such an attorney would certainly have a stronger evidentiary basis for establishing standing than do respondents in the present case."
If the Supreme Court won't rule on a hypothetical until the plaintiff can prove he was damaged, why did it rule on Obamacare before it will take effect? If I can't prove something was stolen from me, should I bother to notify the legal system?
There was proof ObamaCare would directly affect everyone. Your analogy is poor. A better one would be me suing a doctor for leaving a sponge in you during a surgery. I don't have standing to sue, you do.
To me, it's like the Supreme Court is saying, "You can't declare war on another country just because they might attack you, but haven't done so yet." Essentially, five conservative judges have just handed down a 10-years-too-late ruling on the Bush-era pre-emptive strike policy.
Congress gave the president the power to act. They voted on it. Not only the War Powers Act (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Powers_Resolution) But also the Iraq War Resolution (formally the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_Resolution However, I would agree with you that congress should declare war if we're going to war. Neither of those acts are formal declarations of war.
If the 2008 expansion of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) authorized the President to kill citizens he didn't like the look of I guess we'd have to be killed by him before we could sue. One more example of how the supreme court has become nothing more than a politically-controlled device of civil and social misdirection.
No more proof than in this case--FISA will affect everyone by spying on us all. My analogy was more direct. The reader feels it more viscerally than some soft sponge. Anyway, I captured the absurdity. Obviously, the Court will not consistently use their one-time rationalization, because as I showed, it would negate most law.
They have laws against jaywalking. If they're not enforcing those laws, nobody's affected. It is the way it is.
It's exactly the analogy. Only the person arrested for jaywalking is affected by it. There's only you and your tin foil hat that claims you are being spied on. If there's no actual proof of it, just heresay and conspiracy theory claims, you don't have standing to bring a case to court. The me suing your doctor for botching the lobotomy on you analogy is a good one, too. I don't have standing to sue. you do.
