Speaking of bipartisan...

John Schmidt, who served as an assistant attorney general during the Clinton administration, lends further support to the Bush position:

    President Bush's post- Sept. 11, 2001, authorization to the National Security Agency to carry out electronic surveillance into private phone calls and e-mails is consistent with court decisions and with the positions of the Justice Department under prior presidents. . . .

    In the Supreme Court's 1972 Keith decision holding that the president does not have inherent authority to order wiretapping without warrants to combat domestic threats, the court said explicitly that it was not questioning the president's authority to take such action in response to threats from abroad.

    Four federal courts of appeal subsequently faced the issue squarely and held that the president has inherent authority to authorize wiretapping for foreign intelligence purposes without judicial warrant.

    In the most recent judicial statement on the issue, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review, composed of three federal appellate court judges, said in 2002 that "All the . . . courts to have decided the issue held that the president did have inherent authority to conduct warrantless searches to obtain foreign intelligence . . . We take for granted that the president does have that authority."


The New York Times reported on one of those cases, waay back in 1982 :

    A Federal appeals court has ruled that the National Security Agency may lawfully intercept messages between United States citizens and people overseas, even if there is no cause to believe the Americans are foreign agents, and then provide summaries of these messages to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.


In other words, the Times was aware of, and even reported on, precedent that supports the President's interpretation of the law. And, yet, last week they were suddenly "shocked, yes, shocked" to learn this sort of thing happened.

This is looking increasingly like another effort by hostile journalists to gin up a fake scandal and discredit the administration. And once again, Democrats are falling for it.