Never Mind

clipped from www2.timesdispatch.com No more illegal wiretapping of American citizens . . . .This administration acts like violating civil liberties is the way to enhance our security. It is not. -- Barack Obama, Aug. 1, 2007 . . . On second thought, never mind. With the world's attention riveted by the earthquake in Haiti, few noticed when, late last month, a federal judge took a pair of sharp scissors to the Bill of Rights. But on Jan. 22, federal district judge Vaughan Walker agreed to dismiss a lawsuit over warrantless wiretapping, as the administration -- the current one -- had requested. The second suit was filed against the National Security Agency. Walker threw it out on the grounds that the plaintiffs could not show they had been individually harmed, because they could not "differentiate themselves from the mass of telephone and Internet users in the United States." They needed a "direct, personal stake" to claim standing for the right to sue, not merely "a right to have the government follow the law."