Bush has successfully defended anti-terrorism policies

Good piece of new analysis about how Bush has been quite successful at defending his torture and wiretapping policies using procedural barriers to prevent lawsuits.

Sadly, Democrats in Congress have thwarted efforts to restrain Bush's policies:

"Nonetheless, Bush's anti-terrorism policies have not been blocked by the courts or Congress. When the Supreme Court struck down Bush's use of special military trials at Guantanamo on grounds that he had no legal basis for creating them, Congress passed the Military Commissions Act to authorize the trials.

When critics claimed the National Security Agency was violating the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act by intercepting calls without a warrant, Congress passed a law to authorize such wiretapping. The same measure also granted legal immunity to telephone companies that had cooperated with the administration.

Bush's tenure has been particularly frustrating for civil libertarians. They had believed that when the government violated the Constitution, someone could go to court and challenge it. But it's not clear that truism is still true."
 

http://www.latimes.com/news/la-na-bush-terror-law30-2008dec30,0,5295760.story?track=ntothtml