Author Archives: Michael Froomkin

Judge Rules Warrantless Domestic Wiretaps Are Unconstitutional

AP: Judge nixes warrantless surveillance

A federal judge ruled Thursday that the government’s warrantless wiretapping program is unconstitutional and ordered an immediate halt to it.

U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor in Detroit became the first judge to strike down the National Security Agency’s program, which she says violates the rights to free speech and privacy.

Alas, I haven’t time right now to read the opinion [PDF] and judgment and permanent injunction order [PDF].

UPDATE: Jack Balkin read it and isn’t impressed by the quality of the reasoning.

Posted in Civil Liberties, Law: Constitutional Law | 3 Comments

Today’s Gripe: NVu

NVu is a pretty good lightweight WYSIWYG HTML editor. It produces nice clean output without all that cruft that commercial products seem to insist on. But it lacks support for the BLOCKQUOTE tag. Which makes it a pain for me to use. [Yes, yes, I know that blockquote is deprecated in favor of style sheets. But it’s easy, and does exactly what I want to do when insetting quotes. And ‘deprecated’ doesn’t mean obsolete!]

Update: And I wish it had a spell checker too….

Posted in Software | 4 Comments

Strange Priorities

Digby: “This is for real, apparently. The government is actually spending money doing simulations of potential terrorist attacks by peace activists.”

Posted in 9/11 & Aftermath | Comments Off on Strange Priorities

London Backpedals on Bomb Plot

Kevin Drum has the round up on The Incredible Shrinking Bomb Plot.

Posted in 9/11 & Aftermath | Comments Off on London Backpedals on Bomb Plot

Speaking Of 1Ls

Every new entering class brings with it new student bloggers. Pointers to U. Miami Law 1L bloggers (or 2Ls & 3 Ls missing from the left column) most welcome.

Posted in U.Miami | Comments Off on Speaking Of 1Ls

Welcome Section ‘H’

I participated in the Law School’s orientation program today by moderating a discussion on the law relating to Guantanamo with the incoming students in section ‘H’. I don’t teach in the first year — haven’t in far too long — but the idea was that students having a teacher who won’t be grading them this year would make students more willing to talk.

I don’t know if that was the reason, but it was certainly a lively session, and gave me a great feeling for the strength of the incoming class. I saw my role in this session primarily as devil’s advocate, so I didn’t make any effort to give my opinions, although one or two may have bled through. I told the class that if they wanted to know what I think, they’d find it here. So, students wanting to know what I think about the issues will find a hint in my 105 postings on Guantanamo and in the 67 posts on Torture. Since the posts are in reverse chronological order, you should start at the bottom, where you’ll find Guantanamo: Our Collective Shame. Posted October 10, 2003 and still true.

Posted in U.Miami | Comments Off on Welcome Section ‘H’