Damn Activist Judges

This is very good news:

A federal judge struck down President Bush's authority to designate groups as terrorists, saying his post-Sept. 11 executive order was unconstitutional and vague.

Some parts of the Sept. 24, 2001 order tagging 27 groups and individuals as "specially designated global terrorists" were too vague and could impinge on First Amendment rights of free association, U.S. District Judge Audrey Collins said.

The order gave the president "unfettered discretion" to label groups without giving them a way to challenge the designations, she said in a Nov. 21 ruling that was made public Tuesday.

Thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster for checks and balances—although it’s disturbing that limiting the president’s “unfettered discretion” keeps coming down to one woman. (Collins has ruled against Bush-issued Executive Orders before and invalidated parts of the Patriot Act two years ago.) It would be preferable if the Congress could have stopped giving it to him in the first place.

The ruling was praised by David Cole, a lawyer for the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Constitutional Rights, who represented the plaintiff Humanitarian Law Project.

It "says that even in fighting terrorism the president cannot be given a blank check to blacklist anyone he considers a bad guy or a bad group and you can't imply guilt by association," Cole said.

What a concept.

This has absolutely nothing to do with the bill that eradicated habeas corpus and broadly defined “enemy combatant,” but it’s encouraging that Bush’s authority to designate groups as terrorists is being limited, in light of the NIE that referred ominously to “leftist groups” who may “adopt terrorist methods to attack US interests.” Anything that checks in any way the president’s ability to define ideological opponents in whatever framework he chooses is very good.

And, though they won’t be, the people who ought to be happiest about precisely these kinds of limitations are the Bush Conservatives busily building up massive blog archives full of eliminationist rhetoric aimed at liberals. Someday, there’s going to be a liberal in the Oval Office again, and anyone sitting on a mountain of “jokes” about killing liberals probably doesn’t want that liberal president having the authority to deem as terrorists anyone she or he wishes.