The New York Times must have decided that Bush's little NSA spy thing is not really illegal, because they are doing their damndest to come up with every excuse why it's bad. They admit that the program was supposed to be limited to those suspected of involvement with terrorists that are making international calls. They follow that up with, (paraphrase) "but in some cases, a call was mistaken as international but the person on the other end was really in the U.S." Shouldn't it be even more urgent if the person on the other end of the line, who we think is a terrorist, has moved tot he United States?

Anyway, no one has been able to convince that wiretapping suspected terrorists who make frequent calls to countries known to contain large numbers of terrorists is UNREASONABLE search. And the FISA system for getting warrants takes too long for many situations. Ever read a Tom Clancy book, or perhaps had deep discussions with a drug dealer about how his business works? People who talk about illegal stuff on phones tend to change those phones out every few days so that if a warrant is placed on them, the phone that has been authorized to be tapped will no longer be in use. This is sort of like the intelligence "wall," it sounds great in theory until 3,000 people are dead because the people that are supposed to protect us couldn't do their jobs for fear of hurting the rights of mass murderers.

Might I add that the executive's duties and powers are enumerated in the Constitution, and the judicial system cannot abridge these duties and powers, and Congress can only do such with an Amendment. Whatever FISA might say is pretty much meaningless as long as the President is following the Constitution, which again says no unreasonable search and seizures, and wiretapping suspected terrorists making calls to suspected terrorists in other countries is eminently reasonable. That said, the first time I hear that this program was misused (like when Clinton used wiretaps to spy on Americans who worked for foreign companies, which doesn't quite have the same importance as preventing mass murders, and has been conveniently ignored by the left-biased media), then go ahead and fry Bush with my full support.

And more. Isn't it just a bit hypocritical that the people who were calling for heads to roll with the minor and unimportant Plame leak seem to have no such problem with leaks now? The difference.... While the Plame leak may or may not have been illegal, critics were able to use the act of the leak to hurt the Bush administration. The NSA leak, on the other hand, contains information that might hurt Bush, as opposed to the act of leaking hurting him. So this time leaking is ok, it all just depends on what might be spun to make Bush look bad.