ACLU v. National Security Agency (John Dean)

http://writ.news.findlaw.com/dean/20060616.html

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Indeed, if she so chooses, Judge Anna Diggs Taylor can do for America what the GOP-controlled Congress, and Republican-beholden federal judges, have thus far refused to do: She can require the Administration to comply with the law -- and in the process, she can actually examine the validity of the government's claim of "state secrets," rather than merely buying into assertions that national security is involved. Since such claims have been persistently abused by prior presidents, this kind of examination is long overdue...

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The NSA should not be able to profit from the situation of fear and uncertainty it has created, by getting this suit dismissed on this ground -- especially since this kind of fear and uncertainty is exactly why First Amendment doctrine allows standing based on the "chilling effect." A reporter's or scholar's phone call may be very different when it is made under fear of surveillance, and in the knowledge that standards set out in wiretapping laws are being utterly ignored...

Why am I so sure that if she procedes with forcing the government's hand, surely the USSC will hear an emergency appeal to drop the case from the administration and grant it to the government?

...I hope she does the right thing anyway though.