CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS has signed on to the ACLU lawsuit challenging Pres. Bush's secret warrantless wiretapping program.

Although I am named in this suit in my own behalf, I am motivated to join it by concerns well beyond my own. I have been frankly appalled by the discrepant and contradictory positions taken by the Administration in this matter. First, the entire existence of the NSA's monitoring was a secret, and its very disclosure denounced as a threat to national security.
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We are, in essence, being asked to trust the state to know best. What reason do we have for such confidence? The agencies entrusted with our protection have repeatedly been shown, before and after the fall of 2001, to be conspicuous for their incompetence and venality.

I couldn't agree more. But it is a bit cognitively dissonant to read Chris Hitchens asking what reason we have to trust the state to know best. Hasn't he been the one railing against "phony peaceniks" who are not really antiwar, but only pro-war for the "other side"?

Once again, we see the power of self-interest to sway a man's opinion.