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Was a federal judge correct in ruling that President Bush abused his authority on wiretaps? Yes

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Judicial Watch is on the case. A conservative watchdog group in Washington, Judicial Watch is aiming its latest attack at Anna Diggs Taylor, the federal court judge who last week ruled the Bush administration's domestic wiretapping program unconstitutional.

In a classic case of selective outrage, the organization accuses the judge of having a potential conflict of interest. The suit against the Bush administration, which questioned the legality of allowing wiretapping without seeking prior court approval, was brought by the American Civil Liberties Union, among others.

Judicial Watch said Judge Taylor is on the board of a nonprofit organization that has contributed a total of $125,000 to the ACLU since 1999. It says that created a potential conflict of interest for the judge, and it called for further investigation.

We have no doubt that Judicial Watch is correct about the potential conflict. At the very least, Judge Taylor should have declared in court that she is a trustee of the Community Foundation for Southeastern Michigan, the group that contributed funds to the ACLU.

However, in itself that wouldn't necessarily have disqualified her from hearing the case, according to Steven Lubet, a law professor at Northwestern University who was quoted in The New York Times story about the Judicial Watch complaint.

Lubet said that "it certainly would have been prudent" for the judge to make her connection to the Detroit foundation known, but added that "I don't think there's a clear answer as to whether she should have disqualified herself."

Judicial Watch did not go so far as to say that the judge should have disqualified herself. There was no need, since the issue they raised was a pig in a poke to begin with.

Clearly, the organization was unhappy with the judge's ruling that the administration's warrantless wiretapping violated a 1978 surveillance law passed by Congress and was also a constitutional violation.

And so, rather than deal with the message, it went on a fishing expedition to discredit the messenger. It's a coarse tactic that dilutes Judicial Watch's credibility as a courtroom watchdog.

Had the organization challenged the judge's interpretation of the law and documented its position, we might have taken its comments seriously.

But this charge is mainly political game-playing. The group's concern for potential conflicts of interest is capricious. Why else would it raise a fuss about Judge Taylor while remaining silent a few years ago in another case that involved a potential conflict — and one that was far more direct — for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia?

A few years ago, Judicial Watch and the Sierra Club brought suit against Vice President Dick Cheney to force him to reveal the names of those who met with his energy task force. A lower court ruled that Cheney had to turn over all the task force's documents, and the vice president appealed the case to the Supreme Court.

Three weeks after the high court agreed to hear the case, Justice Scalia and Cheney went on a duck-hunting vacation together. At the time, many, including the Sierra Club, thought the chummy relationship between the two might cloud Scalia's ability to remain impartial.

Scalia, predictably, said that was nonsense. Judicial Watch — ironically one of the plaintiffs in the case — should have been outraged (since it is apparently very concerned with potential conflicts of interest).

But evidently that potential conflict, involving a conservative member of the bench, was not as offensive as this one. At least not to the analysts at Judicial Watch.

That makes us wonder, of course, what the group might have done if the judge in the wiretapping case had been a bona fide conservative.