Like Sherlock Holmes said: "When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."

It's almost ludicrously easy to show that Bush's illegal domestic surveillance didn't work, at least for its stated purpose.

1. We already know the Bush warrantless domestic surveillance program only makes sense when it targets English speakers.

2. We already know that the leads the NSA gave to the FBI were worthless (a new bunch of tips meant more “calls to Pizza Hut.” )

3. Today we find out that that the entire program led to less than 10 people who aroused enough suspicion during warrantless eavesdropping to justify interception of their domestic calls.

So, if the program doesn't work for its stated purpose, why does Bush want it so badly? Thomas Powers asks the same question in nicer words at the New York Review of Books:

The questions hardest to answer will be what the NSA actually did, and whether it served any useful purpose. A recent New York Times story contradicts the President's claim that the NSA program was "limited...to known al-Qaeda members or affiliates." Citing anonymous FBI officials, the Times claimed that the NSA flooded the bureau with "thousands" of names per month to check out for possible terrorist connections. Far from being a "vital tool," as described by President Bush, the program was a distracting time waster that sent harried FBI agents down an endless series of blind alleys chasing will-o'-the-wisp terrorists who turned out to be schoolteachers. And far from saving "thousands of lives," as claimed by Vice President Dick Cheney in December 2005, the NSA program never led investigators to a genuine terrorist not already under suspicion, nor did it help them to expose any dangerous plots. So why did the administration continue this lumbering effort for three years? Outsiders sometimes find it tempting to dismiss such wheel-spinning as bureaucratic silliness, but I believe that the Judiciary Committee will find, if it is willing to persist, that within the large pointless program there exists a small, sharply focused program that delivers something the White House really wants. This it will never confess willingly.

Well. What could this small, sharply focused program be? (Could it be the same program that got Bolton those NSA intercepts he refused to reveal to Congress?)

The program has to be ratfucking. That's what Republicans do. That's what Republicans are.

Let's connect a few dots...

There's the curious fact that the Dems behave like they're being blackmailed, and the Beltway as if anything electronic was being read (it's a long post, search on "Noonan").

As Xan points out, all the Republicans know how to do is campaign. So, presented with the opportunity to mine the email and telephone conversations of every American, what could be more likely than that they would seize the opportunity to surveill their political opponents? (Especially since they have stated, over and over again, that Democrats, and any who oppose them, are traitors).

Which leads me to this final and very, very curious incident:

Remember back in 2005 when that light plane invaded DC airspace, and Bush wasn't notified because he was riding his bike? As it turns out, Bush was riding his bike in Patuxent Park, adjacent to NSA headquarters at Fort Meade. Gosh, it's almost like Bush was out there for some kind of handoff, isn't it? A handoff so important nobody could interrupt Him. Some fresh intercepts, perhaps?