First of all, we wouldn't even know about this secret federal court that meets in complete secrecy if it hadn't been for John Ashcroft filing an appeal to the verdict they reached last May. That appeal was filed on Thursday, August 22.

Secondly, this group of judges inside the Justice Department was set up in 1978 as a way to steamroll and trample over individual rights granted by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

Federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies like the FBI and National Security Agency (NSA) routinely apply to this court for permission to conduct searches, wire taps, and physical surveillance without first going through individual State and Circuit Courts as well as other Federal District Courts where secrecy my not be maintainable.

According to critics like Patrick S. Poole: "During the 20-year tenure of the FISC the court has received over 10,000 applications for covert surveillance and physical searches. To date, not a single application has been denied" at least until May 17, 2002, when they denied Ashcroft the right to fully exercise provisions in the full Patriot Act.

In an article titled "The Limits of Trust" the Washington Post noted on Friday, August 23, that "The court said no. It cited a variety of legal considerations, but underlying these was another factor: The judges report that the FBI has not played straight with them over the role prosecutors have been playing in the process in the past. In September 2000, (a full year before the WTC attacks) the judges recount, the government 'came forward to confess error in some 75 FISA applications related to major terrorist attacks directed against the United States.' These errors almost uniformly 'involved information sharing and unauthorized disseminations to criminal investigators and prosecutors.' They included an 'erroneous statement' by then-FBI Director Louis Freeh and misrepresentations in the FISA applications of FBI agents concerning 'the separation of overlapping intelligence and criminal investigations.' They also included 'ommissions of material facts from FBI FISA affidavits relating to a prior relationship between the FBI and a FISA target.' Furthermore, the judges complain that they have yet to receive any explanation of how they came to be misled, despite the fact that internal investigations have been ongoing 'for more than one year.'"

While the Mayberry News Services are so far portraying this as nothing more than another topic to be discussed and argued at Floyd's Barber Shop right next to the latest diet control and exercise opinions, the real decision lies with you the citizen. How long are you going to trust a government that flagrantly robs you, and for that reason is just as afraid of its own citizens as it is of terrorists attacking their New World Odor?

The last two paragraphs of Mr. Poole's "Inside America's Secret Court" are well worth your attention:

"No free society has ever been able to survive the rapid expansion of government power seen in our current political atmosphere. Nor has a government that has whet its appetite on unbridled power been able to satiate its hunger for more—more power, more taxes, more subservient citizens. This pattern of secret power—once its effectiveness has been proven—quickly finds replication, as can be seen in the 1995 establishment of another secret court by Congress and the Clinton administration—the Alien Terrorist Removal Court.

Free societies hang in a precarious balance. Very little is actually needed to tip the societal scales in favor of anarchy or tyranny. The present political course of our country seems to indicate that our future will be the latter. The operation of the FISC is merely a symptom of the larger statist infection that has reached pandemic levels in our political system. Twenty years of experience with the FISC has demonstrated that what began as a restraint upon unlimited search and surveillance powers has fallen prey to the same philosophy and practice that has continued the erosion of our liberties. The FISC has become a political weapon against the citizenry, and for the safety and protection of our country its reign must be overthrown."