Roberts Appoints Conservative Ex-Starr Deputy to FISA Court

According to a new report by the Federation of American Scientists, Chief Justice John Roberts has appointed Judge John Bates to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. Bates is replacing Judge James Robertson, who resigned last December to protest President Bush’s illegal domestic wiretapping program.

Bates has a “distinctly conservative cast to his resume.” From 1995 to 1997, he served as Ken Starr’s deputy in the Whitewater investigation, a glorified political witch-hunt that never managed to turn up evidence of wrongdoing by the Clintons.

In 2001, Bates was appointed to district court by President Bush, where he was assigned the lawsuit seeking details about Vice President Cheney’s secret energy taskforce. In a widely criticized ruling, Bates dismissed the case:

The third Starr retread currently wielding a gavel, District Judge John Bates, played a major role in stymieing a more substantive investigation than the one he pursued under Starr. The General Accounting Office (GAO) brought the first lawsuit in its 80-plus-year existence after Dick Cheney stonewalled its attempt to obtain information about the veep’s 2001 energy task force. Bates, who provided the rationale for subpoenaing any woman to whom Clinton may have talked dirty about Whitewater, dismissed the GAO’s effort to learn with whom Cheney’s task force conferred.

Now, on the FISA court, one can only hope Bates will care as much about the privacy of ordinary Americans as he did for Dick Cheney, Ken Lay, and Big Oil executives.

http://thinkprogress.org/2006/03/24/roberts-appoints-conservative-ex-starr-deputy-to-fisa-court/trackback/

These people are first and foremost political partisan hacks.

sheese the american mafia take care of it's ratfinks and doublecrossers better then the usa.....why doesn't anyone fight for the usa?

They turned down a handful out fo thousands of wiretap requests. The problem is Bush doesn't even consult them.

Now that Bush has gone down in polls we will see more and more of this. The right wing will try to change any thing it can to their way of thinking in case they do not stay in power and that they are also sort of drunk in the power they have now. It will also be the same with the crooks coming out of the wood work to get all they can. Look at the selling off of the national parks that is coming up. They have put their people in all the gov. dept and they will be hard at it to do what they can before Nov. I get the funny feeling that the Dem. in Congress are letting them do it as to show what they are. I would like to see them screaming my self.

Or does Roberts get to appoint whomever he wants?