At first glance one would think this is a bad thing considering how many times the Feds have used the " States Secrets Act" to stop from going to trial. Not so this time, not yet anyway. All 17 cases have been given to the one Judge that thinks they are no longer a secret. Hot Damn !

The Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation transferred the cases to U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker, who last month declined to dismiss one of the lawsuits brought against the federal government and AT&T Inc., according to an order released Thursday.

This should give everyone some hope of at least a fair hearing. Too many times in recent history has our goverment tried to get around the law by hiding the facts behind some excuse. It's time we got our day in court. http://biz.yahoo.com/...This is really great news because not only the 17 cases tranfered to Judge Walker are involved, but possibly another 26 case could be tranfered to Walker. Gonzales must be very unhappy about all this. If it comes out that the Telcos have been breaking the law at the request of Bush, Cheney and Gonzales it's going to make a even better case for Impeachment and even a huge financial judgement.

Walker ruled July 20 the warrantless eavesdropping has been so widely reported there's no danger of exposing secrets. No hearing has been set, and the Justice Department has asked Walker to halt the case pending appeal.

The lawsuits challenge President Bush's assertion that he can use his wartime powers to eavesdrop on Americans without a warrant. The suits accuse the companies of illegally making communications on their networks available to the National Security Agency without warrants.

This will finally be a real test of Inherent Authority, and a chance recoop some of our basic civil rights.
Some of these cases will undoubtably include the cases Arlan has been trying to provide cover for the president by passing laws to make legal things we don't even know about. Hopefully this will stop that kind of bullshit.

"Is the president doing anything wrong?" Specter asked. "We don't know, because we don't know what the program is."

There's no doubt that the program is going on in violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, a 1978 law that requires a secret court to approve investigative wiretapping before it occurs, Specter said. What remains murky, he added, is whether the president's constitutional powers as commander-in-chief would justify the program's existence without a court order.

"Here you have a lot of taps going on in America, in violation of a statute," Specter said.

We can be sure Gonzales is not done. He is certain to try and block this court and go over their head. Personally since enough Judges have looked at this and decided Walkers court is the right place to hear these cases, I believe we may have a fighting chance. It's about time the truth started to find it's way to the suface. Cross posted at DailyKos.