'No hereditary kings'.

Byline: The Register-Guard

A federal district judge in Detroit did Thursday what an invertebrate U.S. Congress has refused to do since The New York Times reported last December that the Bush administration was spying on Americans' telephone calls and e-mails without warrants.

Judge Anna Diggs Taylor stood up to the administration's trampling of the Bill of Rights. She ruled that warrantless wiretapping of U.S. citizens violates the Constitution and federal law. And she ordered the National Security Agency to shut it down. Now.

It was a courageous defense of the Constitution from a judge who as a young black attorney in 1964 helped face down an angry crowd outside a sheriff's office in Philadelphia, Miss., after three civil rights activists turned up missing.

That harrowing experience may have helped prepare Taylor for the task of rejecting the administration's specious yet intimidating argument that a lawsuit against the NSA operation should not go forward because it would damage national security by divulging state secrets.

The ruling came in a case brought by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of reporters, academics and researchers who claimed their overseas contacts have dried up as a result of the NSA wiretaps.

Taylor's ruling is merely the first step in a case that is likely to end up before the U.S. Supreme Court. Calling the program "an essential tool" in the war on terrorism, the administration promptly appealed the ruling and sought a stay to prevent it from being enforced.

It would have been shocking if the administration had done other- wise. Since shortly after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the president and his minions have argued that the commander in chief has the wartime authority to override the law.

Taylor set that argument on its head, where it belongs. The president, the judge said, violated the Fourth Amendment and other constitutional protections, as well as federal statutes, when he authorized the military to wiretap the international calls and e-mails of Americans sans court oversight.

"It was never the intent of the Framers to give the president such unfettered control, particularly where his actions blatantly disregarded the parameters clearly enumerated in the Bill of Rights," Taylor wrote. She added: "There are no hereditary kings in America."

Bush has insisted that Congress gave tacit approval to such activities in 2001 when it authorized the president to use "all necessary and appropriate force" against those responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks.

Congress did nothing of the kind. If it had intended to allow NSA monitoring of phone calls and e-mails, it would have revised the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which was passed for the precise purpose of prohibiting warrantless wiretapping while allowing ample authority for legitimate intelligence gathering.

Yet the Republican-controlled legislative branch has cravenly refused to rein in the Republican-controlled executive branch. Now, Taylor's ruling should finally embolden lawmakers to approve legislation making it clear that there must be no spying on Americans without court oversight - and that the president is not above the authority of Congress, the courts, the law or the Con- stitution.