Homeland Security Given Green Light to Monitor American Journalists

[Jan Klimkowski]

A legal effort to block the government's warrantless domestic surveillance program has failed after the Supreme Court ruled Tuesday a group of journalists, lawyers and human rights groups cannot challenge the law. In what's been described as a Kafkaesque decision, the five-four conservative majority agreed with the Obama administration by concluding the plaintiffs lacked, quote, "standing" or jurisdiction to proceed, since they could not prove they had been targets of the secretive surveillance program. The American Civil Liberties Union and a coalition of human rights groups and journalists filed the lawsuit in 2008 hours after President Bush signed amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which gave the National Security Agency almost unchecked power to monitor international phone calls and emails of Americans.

Cue hysterical laughter.