"That's some catch, that Catch-22"
-- Joseph Heller, Catch-22

With a bit of circular logic that would have even Joseph Heller cringing, the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals said yesterday, in a two to one decision, that plaintiffs who had challenged the Bush administration's domestic spying program did not have legal standing to do so because they could not prove the program had harmed them.

In other words, the group couldn't prove a secret program had affected them because, well, it's secret. As long as the Bush cabal maintains in secret any program it wants to operate, there's nothing anybody can do about it.

Needless to say, the two judges who ruled in favor of the administration, Alice M. Batcheider and Julia Smith Gibbons, were appointed by Republicans. Several days ago I called for the impeachment of Supreme Court justices Roberts and Alito. Perhaps I should amend my opinion to include the impeachment of any Republican-appointed federal judge since the Nixon administration.

Indeed, Richard Nixon, in whatever hell he inhabits, must today be slapping himself upside the head and exclaiming "why didn't I think of that?"