Via WaPo:

A federal judge has resigned from the court that oversees government surveillance in intelligence cases in protest of President Bush’s secret authorization of a domestic spying program, according to two sources.

U.S. District Judge James Robertson, one of 11 members of the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, sent a letter to Chief Justice John D. Roberts Jr. late Monday notifying him of his resignation without providing an explanation.

Two associates familiar with his decision said yesterday that Robertson privately expressed deep concern that the warrantless surveillance program authorized by the president in 2001 was legally questionable and may have tainted the FISA court’s work…

…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….

Hugh Hewitt writes:

When he resigns his lifetime seat in protest, I’ll be impressed. But pardon me if I think the drama here is a little like Senator Rockefeller’s Uriah Heep imitation…

Jim Hoft has more.

Background on Robertson’s Hamdan ruling from Paul Mirengoff.

AJ Strata wonders if Robertson is leaky.

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