This is the most illuminating part of the whole story.
Robertson is considered a liberal judge who has often ruled against the Bush administration's assertions of broad powers in the terrorism fight, most notably in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld . Robertson held in that case that the Pentagon's military commissions for prosecuting terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, were illegal and stacked against the detainees.
In other words, just more political theatre. It's no wonder that the President wanted to avoid the FISA Court.
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Robert Novak reported:
WASHINGTON -- Federal District Judge James Robertson, who resigned from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance (FISA) court in protest over secret wiretaps ordered by President Bush, is regarded in Washington legal circles as one of President Bill Clinton's most liberal and partisan judicial appointments.
Robertson, 67, has ruled consistently against the Bush administration's handling of enemy combatants. On July 15 this year, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia reversed his 2004 ruling that a military commission could not try alleged terrorist Salim Ahmed Hamdan.
In private Washington practice before going on the court, Robertson was an aggressive civil rights advocate. He spent 1969-1972 with the Lawyer's Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, serving for a time as the organization's chief counsel in Jackson, Miss. In 1994, Clinton named him to the federal bench, where he remains despite his resignation from the FISA court.
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