Judge Taylor draws right wing's fire

The right wingers are giving Judge Taylor's decision on NSA surveillance an "F" but the NYT gives her high marks for a courageous and timely ruling today. Meanwhile the swiftboating of Taylor has already begun with accusations of collusion with the far left against this "anti-American activist judge" arising from the legions of the raging right screechosphere. This is, of course, is just their usual code for how dare you disagree with "our" president.

The high profile Bush bloggers find damning evidence of bias in Taylor's appointment by Jimmy Carter. An odd contrast to their defense of GOP appointed judges who rule in ways they find acceptable. Those judges of course are never ideologues, they're always only "strict constitutionalists."

I have my doubts the ruling will survive an appeal in the much more administration friendly Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals but my hat's off to the Judge for a courageous ruling that she had to know would expose her to the full force of the rightwingnuts vitriol. As the Time notes, no matter what the ultimate outcome, it's good that this decision is now on the books.

But for now, with a careful, thoroughly grounded opinion, one judge in Michigan has done what 535 members of Congress have so abysmally failed to do. She has reasserted the rule of law over a lawless administration and shown why issues of this kind belong within the constitutional process created more than two centuries ago to handle them.

Indeed, this is how our government is supposed to work. The Congress should keep that in mind before they rush to usurp the system of checks and balances so carefully crafted at the birth of our nation by making legal this illegal conduct our Founders so wisely prohibited. That would really be anti-American.