Ninja Monkie Bacchanal

From Wired.com:

There’s nothing unconstitutional about Congress putting an end to lawsuits accusing the nation’s largest telecoms of secretly helping the Bush administration spy on Americans’ communications, government and telecom lawyers told a federal court late Wednesday.

At issue is the recently enacted “telecom immunity” power which the Bush administration is trying to use to wipe out dozens of anti-spying lawsuits targeting AT&T, Verizon and Sprint. The suits accuse the companies of violating federal privacy law when they allegedly secretly helped the government snoop into on Americans’ phone calls, phone records and emails.

The government played the immunity card in the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s case against AT&T in September. That suit, along with some three dozen others, are being heard in by Chief Judge Vaughn Walker of the Northern District of California’s federal court.