MIXED SIGNALS FROM USA TODAY

This piece in USA today, which otherwise broke the telephone database story, also suggested:

Bush signed an executive order allowing the NSA to engage in eavesdropping without a warrant. The president and his representatives have since argued that an executive order was sufficient for the agency to proceed. Some civil liberties groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union, disagree.

Except it isn't just "civil liberties groups." It's basically anybody who is versed in the issue and who is not a representative of the Bush administration, or one of a relative handful of "blind loyalists who have a far different view of the Constitution and America than our founding fathers did" (as aptly noted here). The issue is clear cut, and unambiguous.

Painting a much more realistic picture, USA Today Board of Contributors member (And GW Law Professor) Jonathan Turley, while still slightly sugar coating the surveillance issues, notes:

This month, Congress is faced with a most inconvenient crime...

...What is most striking about these programs is that they were revealed not by members of Congress but by... Journalists who confronted Congress with evidence...

In response, President Bush has demanded to know who will rid him of these meddlesome whistleblowers, and various devout members have rushed forth with cudgels and codes in hand.  Now, it appears Congress is finally acting — not to end alleged criminal acts by the administration, mind you, but to stop the public from learning about such alleged crimes in the future. Members are seeking to give the president the authority to continue to engage in warrantless domestic surveillance as they call for whistleblowers to be routed out. They also want new penalties to deter both reporters and their sources.

The debate has taken on a hopeful Zen-like quality for besieged politicians: If a crime occurs and no one is around to reveal it or to report it, does it really exist?

This seems to have more in common with the governmental attitude of the regime that we just took out in Iraq, than America, land of the free, home of the brave.  More related irony.

Republican Journalist Lex Alexander covers the issue here, and has generally done a good job on the larger topic.  Former Provost, historian, and University of Law Professor Geoffrey Stone, in part of a memo to the House Special Intelligence Committee, dissects the general issue further.  And Glenn Greenwald, Constitutional Lawyer and author, "How Would a Patriot Act," offers a brilliant analysis here:

.......It really is hard to imagine any measures which pose a greater and more direct danger to our freedoms than the issuance of threats like this by the administration against the press. If the President has the power to keep secret any information he wants simply by classifying it -- including information regarding illegal or otherwise improper actions he has taken -- then the President, by definition, has complete control over the flow of information which Americans receive about their Government.

A skeptic might argue that the President would only seek this with respect to information that pertains to "fighting terrorism."  But it doesn't really matter what the reason is, the principles are the same, and it is why, as Stone notes, they have served us well and been fairly ironclad for over 200 years. And it is why the  freedom of the press that they supported was considered by Jefferson, as Greenwald notes, to be more essential to America than the establishment of government itself.  Additionally, by authorizing the NSA surveillance program in violation of FISA, the administration has already established that it believes that it has the right to undertake any action in the name of "combating terrorism," including the action itself, the classification of it, and now the persecution and prosecution of anyone who leaks it.  Alexander, Greenwald, and others  have made references to Pravda and the former Soviet Union, and those references are appropriate.

It may also be enlightening to recall, as Russia, under the rule of Putin, slips back towards its old repressive habits, the words of President Bush with respect to Putin a few years back;  "I looked into his eyes, and I knew I could trust him."  Perhaps what the President saw, when he looked into Putin's eyes, was a reflection of himself.