It was the Bush Administration in Washington D.C. with the warrantless wiretapping!

Warrantless domestic wiretapping…it will be very difficult to challenge it judicially because no one exactly KNOWS when their communications are being intercepted with any certainty. And you need to know because you have to prove that there has been a violation of your privacy rights under the 4th Amendment. And without any proof, you don’t have standing to challenge it anywhere. So learned the ACLU today.

There have been attempts; oh, have there been attempts! But they’ve gone to shit for procedural or security reasons:

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last year ruled against an Islamic charity that also challenged the program, concluding that a key piece of evidence is protected as a state secret.

In that case, the Oregon-based U.S. arm of the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation alleged the National Security Agency illegally listened to its calls. The charity had wanted to introduce as evidence a top-secret call log it received mistakenly from the Treasury Department.

A separate lawsuit against telecommunications companies that have cooperated with the government is pending in the San Francisco-based appeals court. A U.S. district court also is examining whether the warrantless surveillance of people in the United States violates the law that regulates the wiretapping of suspected terrorists and requires the approval of a secret court.

A federal judge in Detroit declared the spying program unconstitutional in 2006, saying it violated the rights to free speech and privacy and the separation of powers. The appeals court decision that the Supreme Court upheld Tuesday resulted from the judge’s ruling.

Several months after the judge in Detroit ruled against the Terrorist Surveillance Program, the administration announced in January 2007 that it would put intercepts of communications on U.S. soil under the oversight of the secret court, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

The ACLU, in urging the justices to consider its case, said that because the administration voluntarily ended the warrantless wiretapping, it could easily restart it.

“There is a real risk that the president could decide he is not subject to the law,” said Jameel Jaffer, director of the ACLU’s national security project. [Emphasis added.]

Gasp! Not the same president who has allegedly stolen two elections, misled a number of government officials and the American public into going into a nearly five-year war (and counting), and has insisted that he will ignore any law abiding protection of the citizenry to “combat turr’rism” around the globe — even as he harbors terrorists in the good ol’ U.S. through procedural bullshit.

He ain’t decided that shit already? About not following the law? I’m pissed that no one wants to hold this Jack of Ass and his VP, the Ass of Spades, accountable. I’m also annoyed that legal challenges are being glanced off so casually. What happened to protecting our rights?