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In case you haven't heard yet, a big HUGE victory for both civil liberties and the rule of law today.

A federal judge in Detroit ordered a halt to the National Security Agency's warrantless surveillance program, ruling for the first time that the controversial effort ordered by President Bush was unconstitutional.

U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor wrote in a strongly-worded 43-page opinion that the NSA wiretapping program violates privacy and free-speech rights and the constitutional separation of powers between the three branches of government. She also found that it violates a 1978 law set up to oversee clandestine surveillance

Glenn Greenwald is, as you would expect, providing extensive commentary on this, so I would suggest you head over to his site first for some excellent analysis. Two of his points are worth immediately nothing, however:

(1) Even with this Order, the Bush administration is free to continue to do all the eavesdropping on terrorists they want to do. They just have to do so with approval of the FISA court -- just like all administrations have done since 1978, just as the law requires, and just as they did when eavesdropping as part of the surveillance they undertook on the U.K. terror plot.

(2) The court's ruling that warrantless eavesdropping violates the Fourth and First Amendments clearly means (although the decision is far from a model of clarity) that Congress cannot authorize warrantless eavesdropping with legislation, which would preclude enforcement of the Specter bill.

For those looking to read the opinion themselves, here's your PDF. The entire thing is obviously worth reading, but there are two in particular that caught my attention. The first comes from Section VIII and deals with the administration's claim that the Authorization for the Use of Military Force in Iraq (AUMF) grants the president the power to violate the FISA statutes:

The AUMF resolution, if indeed it is construed as replacing FISA, gives no support to Defendants here. Even if that Resolution superceded all other statutory law, Defendants have violated the Constitutional rights of their citizens including the First Amendment, Fourth Amendment, and the Separation of Powers doctrine.

And the second, a slightly longer section, is taken from Section IX, which rules on their claim of "inherent powers" and "inherent executive authority":

We must first note that the Office of the Chief Executive has itself been created, with its powers, by the Constitution. There are no hereditary Kings in America and no powers not created by the Constitution. So all “inherent powers” must derive from that Constitution.

We have seen in Hamdi that the Fifth Amendment of the United States Constitution is fully applicable to the Executive branch’s actions and therefore it can only follow that the First and Fourth Amendments must be applicable as well. In the Youngstown case the same “inherent powers” argument was raised and the Court noted that the President had been created Commander in Chief of only the military, and not of all the people, even in time of war. Indeed, since Ex Parte Milligan, we have been taught that the “Constitution of the United States is a law for rulers and people, equally in war and in peace. . . .” Ex Parte Milligan, 71 U.S. (4 Wall.) 2, 120 (1866). Again, in Home Building & Loan Ass’n v. Blaisdell, we were taught that no emergency can create power.

Finally, although the Defendants have suggested the unconstitutionality of FISA, it appears
to this court that that question is here irrelevant. Not only FISA, but the Constitution itself has been violated by the Executive’s TSP. As the court states in Falvey, even where statutes are not explicit, the requirements of the Fourth Amendment must still be met.54 And of course, the Zweibon opinion of Judge Skelly Wright plainly states that although many cases hold that the President’s power to obtain foreign intelligence information is vast, none suggest that he is immune from Constitutional requirements.

This clearly will not be the end of this story. Attorney General Gonzales has already announced plans to appeal, a process that no doubt will take us all the way to the Supreme Court. Nevertheless, the importance of the ruling today cannot be underestimated. Our system of checks and balances may have been slow to react, but it is finally reacting.

As I find additional commentary worth noting, I'll continue updating this post with links and excepts.

UPDATE: This may be the only commentary I need to highlight. Jack Cafferty:

You know Wolf, it seems like were having this discussion about this judge’s ruling sort of in the abstract, as if there’s no precedent for what the judge decided. The judge in effect upheld the ruling of the FISA court which says that ‘if you want to wiretap phones you need a warrant to do so’. The court was created by Congress in 1978 I think it was and the law of the land says, "Get a warrant". The actions of the administration have ignored the law of the land in that regard. So it’s not a discussion in the abstract. It’s not hypothetical. There are laws on the books against what the administration is doing and it’s about time someone said it out loud.

This Federal district judge ruled today President Bush is breaking the law by spying on people, in this country, without a warrant. The judge said the President is violating the First Amendment to the Constitution. The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act FISA, passed by Congress 1978, specifically to prevent this kind of abuse of power. It was being done before. That’s why the FISA court was created in the first place.

So what does this mean? It means President Bush violated his oath of office, among other things, when he swore to uphold the Constitution of the United States. It means he’s been lying to us about the program since it started, when tells us there’s nothing illegal about what he’s doing. A court has ruled it is illegal. And it means a 75 year old black female judge in Michigan has finally stepped in and done the job that Congress is supposed to do, namely oversight of the executive branch of government. But the gov…but the Congress is controlled by Republicans. They are controlled by the President, and they have done nothing in the way of oversight.

Then again, Sen. Russ Feingold gets it in a sentence or two:

The President must return to the Constitution and follow the statutes passed by Congress. We all want our government to monitor suspected terrorists, but there is no reason for it to break the law to do so.

Need a talking point? Russ just gave you one.