It is recorded that President John Quincy Adams once observed to Chief Justice John Marshall that "law logic," as he phrased it, is merely "an artificial system of reasoning, exclusively used in the courts, but good for nothing anywhere else." In the same era Charles Dickens had one of his more insightful characters, a certain Mr. Bumble, also reflect on the logic of the law and its not infrequently unfathomable assumptions: "If the law supposes that, the law is a ass -- a idiot."

The initial decision in the case of ACLU v. NSA may not have been affirmed last week, but the wisdom of John Q. and Mr. Bumble was.

In the matter of Mr. Bush's stupendously illegal wiretapping program, "The majority in a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, in Cincinnati, ruled on a narrow ground, saying the plaintiffs, including lawyers and journalists, could not show injury direct and concrete enough to allow them to have standing to sue."

And it may be an insurmountable hurdle for the plaintiffs ever to show direct and concrete injury to allow them to have standing to sue, because, as one the concurring appellate judges blithely put it, "the plaintiffs are ultimately prevented from establishing standing because of the state secrets privilege." That little legal gem "requires courts to limit or dismiss cases when allowing them to proceed would disclose information harmful to national security."

Hence if some pea brain of an autocratic president patently violates his constitutional oath by trampling on your constitutional rights, and you in fact can prove it, you in fact can't prove it, because you can't "provide evidence that [you] are personally subject" to the patently unconstitutional violation, because the violator is permitted to claim that your proving it would be harmful to national security, which he happens to be dismantling by trampling on your First and Fourth Amendment rights, which is absurdly illegal, which you can prove, which is why you sued in the first place, but the president's illegality against you is protected by his greater illegality against the nation. Got it?

Naturally the White House was delighted by the ruling. Its deputy press secretary, Tony Fratto, issued a statement: "We have always believed that the district courtâ€™s decision declaring the Terrorist Surveillance Program unconstitutional was wrongly decided. The court of appeals properly determined that the plaintiffs had failed to show their claims were entitled to review in federal court."

This is the same deputy press secretary who, earlier this week, dismissed yet another Republican senator's misgivings about the Iraq war by saying, "We would counsel a little bit of patience."

Patience? What kind of swinishly bad joke is that?

And now Mr. Fratto beams over his boss' criminality getting tossed.

Allow me to counsel you a little bit, Mr. Deputy Press Secretary. And allow me to do it in language to which this site is unaccustomed, yet is employed by no less than that inestimable personage of our vice president in the course of his Senate-floor statecraft -- and I quote: "Go f*** yourself."

Sometimes "direct and concrete" advice is the best.

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