Kevin Drum thinks the Bush administration's domestic spying program goes beyond conventional wiretaps to some sort of broad-based techno-sleuthing: "Perhaps some kind of massive data mining, which makes it impossible to get individual warrants?...it's something disturbing enough that a few weeks after 9/11 the administration apparently felt that even Republicans in Congress wouldn't approve of it. What kind of program is so intrusive that even Republicans, even with 9/11 still freshly in mind, wouldn't have supported it?"

Comments

[John D. Young]

Another good article on this is Alter's "How Bush Tried to Kill Snoopgate Story" at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10536559/site/newsweek/ . Bush actually summoned NYT publisher Arthur Sulzberger and Editor Bill Keller to the White House to pressure them to not run the Spy piece. A lot of people since 9/11 have suspected that cell phones and emails are being "mined" by the NSA. It will be interesting if confirmation of this process is what Sen. Jay Rockefeller was discussing in his letter. Will we actually throw out the Bill of Rights in order to fearfully pursue our security? Another deeply disturbing part of the NYT story is the fact that the Times sat on this story for a year. No wonder Bush tried to appeal once again to whatever it was that originally shelved this story.