Judge refuses to dismiss NSA lawsuit

With the world on fire, it's easy to overlook some big stories.

Glenn Greenwald has one here:

The Bush adminstration suffered an enormous defeat today, as a federal district court denied its motion to dismiss the lawsuit brought by the Electronic Frontier Foundation against AT&T, which alleges that the administration's NSA warrantless eavesdropping program (and AT&T's cooperation with it) is illegal. Most significantly, the district court, which is in the Northern District of California, rejected the administration's claim that allowing the litigation to proceed would jeopardize the disclosure of "state secrets," a doctrine which the administration has repeatedly exploited to prevent judicial review of its conduct. Traditionally, courts almost always defer to the executive's invocation of that claim and accept the President's claim that national security requires dismissal of the case. But this time, the court rejected that claim.