The domestic spying suit has been dismissed at the appeals court level on a party-line vote; the GOP judges agreed with the government that those who brought the suit had no standing to do so.

The decision “insulates the Bush administration’s warrantless surveillance activities from judicial review and deprives Americans of any ability to challenge the illegal surveillance of their telephone calls and e-mails,” ACLU Legal Director Steven Shapiro said in a news release.

We’ve said it before, and we say it again: the damage this Administration has done to our country is tremendous, and it starts with Bush’s utter contempt for the rule of law.