Secret Court Rebuffs Ashcroft: The secretive federal court that approves spying on terror suspects in the United States has refused to give the Justice Department broad new powers, saying the government had misused the law and misled the court dozens of times, according to an extraordinary legal ruling released yesterday.

Sad thing is, most of the offenses the FISA court objects to occurred under the Clinton administration. That said, I cannot imagine that Ashcroft and his minions wouldn't and have not grossly misused their powers under this act. (To be quite honest, I can't imagine how you can easily avoid misusing them. To expect that the FBI's intelligence division will refuse to share information with its own criminal investigations divisions flies in the face of common sense.)

Unfortunately, Congress seems willing to lessen the standard for getting FISA warrants approved. Since the Justice department is not in the least concerned about privacy protections and the difference between domestic criminal and foreign intelligence investigations, it seems certain that once Congress lowers the standard for getting FISA warrants, the court will find itself again being grossly misused.

Ashcroft has appealed the decision ... to the court itself, which seems nonsensical on its face. The court essentially has to overturn its own decision -- which, against all precedent and in the face of Justice's opposition, it released to the public, as it has released no other document ever -- in order for Ashcroft's appeal to succeed. FISA sits more or less outside the normal federal judiciary channels, although it does draw its judges from the standard judiciary; there is no real superior court, due to the nature of the information on which it bases its decisions.