Very Interesting

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/23/washington/23judge.html?ex=1313985600&en=2a8082331233aff1&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss
"The federal judge who ruled last week that President Bush's eavesdropping program was unconstitutional is a trustee and an officer of a group that has given at least $125,000 to the American Civil Liberties Union in Michigan, a watchdog group said Tuesday," reports the New York Times:
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The group, Judicial Watch, a conservative organization here that found the connection, said the link posed a possible conflict for the judge, Anna Taylor Diggs, and called for further investigation. . . .
The Web site for the group that supported the A.C.L.U., the Community Foundation for Southeastern Michigan in Detroit, lists Judge Taylor as its secretary and a trustee. It indicates that trustees make all financing decisions for the organization, whose assets exceed $350 million and which gives grants for a variety of community projects. . . .
The executive director of the Michigan A.C.L.U., Kary Moss, said her group had received four grants totaling $125,000 from the foundation since 1999. They were a $20,000 grant in 1999 for an educational program on the Bill of Rights, $60,000 in 2000, along with the N.A.A.C.P. and other groups for education on racial profiling, $20,000 in 2002 for work on racial profiling and $25,000 in 2002 for a lawyer to work on gay rights.
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The ACLU is the lead plaintiff in the case and provided legal counsel to the other plaintiffs. Yet the legal ethicists the Times interviews don't seem overly concerned. One of them, Stephen Gillers of New York University, "said he did not think there were grounds for Judge Taylor to remove herself from the case":
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"The question is whether her impartiality might reasonably be questioned," Professor Gillers said, "and the fact that she sits on the board of a group that gives money to the plaintiff for an otherwise unrelated endeavor would not in my mind raise reasonable questions about her partiality on the issue of warrantless wiretapping."