Pravda on the Potomac; Izvestia on the Hudson. It couldn’t be more clear*. Check out Times stenographers Eric Lichtblau and David Johnson. The headline:

Court to Oversee U.S. Wiretapping in Terror Cases

Wrong. The court has always “overseen” wiretapping. Bush simply broke the law, and declined to involve them.

Wronger. The issue is not merely wiretapping of voice, but interception of email. The SCLM has confused this issue from day one; the technical and legal issues are completely different.

After the appalling headline, the appalling lead:

The Bush administration, in a surprise reversal, said on Wednesday that it had agreed to give a secret court jurisdiction over the National Security Agency’s wiretapping program and would end its practice of eavesdropping without warrants on Americans suspected of ties to terrorists.

Wrong “Surprise reversal.” This is no such thing. All Bush and Gonzales are trying to do is evade accountability with a vaguely worded letter and (see below) a secret decision by a single judge in a non-adversarial setting, instead of having compliant Republicans rewrite the law to offer them blanket amnesty. Like sharks, they never change. Circle and eat, circle and eat. The Republican drive to evade accountability and replace the Constitution with authoritarian rule is just as strong today as it was November 6. For them, nothing has changed except for the Kabuki.

Wronger “Had agreed to give a secret court jurisdiction,” forsooth? No. Under FISA, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court always had jurisdiction over the program. Bush broke the law, and according to the decision in ACLU vs. NSA committed over thirty felonies, one for each time He purportedly authorized the program. So, Bush “agreed” to obey the law, but when the executive “agrees” to obey the law, do we really have a Constitutional system of government anymore? Or do we have a king?

Even more wrong. As above, the program is not only about “wiretapping” (voice) but about intercepting email. In fact, there’s a massive program to collect email (and blogs). Is this program now “authorized” by the Court? A question not asked by the Times stenographers.

But it keeps getting better:

The Justice Department said it had worked out an “innovative” arrangement with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that provided the “necessary speed and agility” to provide court approval to monitor international communications of people inside the United States without jeopardizing national security.

What in the name of sweet, suffering Jeebus does “innovative” mean? nothing good, if past behavior is any guide. But the Times stenographers avert their eyes, and don’t ask the question.

And what in the name of sweet, suffering Jeebus does “necessary speed and agility” mean? FISA already has a 15-day “grace period,” so that the administration can initiate action immediately and get the warrant when possible. And FISA has only refused a handful of requests. So what additional “speed and agility” can they need? Again, the Times stenographers avert their eyes, and don’t ask the question.

And now it gets even worse:

The decision capped 13 months of bruising national debate over the reach of the president’s wartime authorities and his claims of executive power, and it came as the administration faced legal and political hurdles in its effort to continue the surveillance program.

Note the sloppy wording, which invests the Gonzales statement with a spurious aura of legitimacy: “decision.” “Decision” by a court? Where’s the citation? Or “decision” by the Decider? The story does not say.

And “the decision capped”? Oh, is this the end of the story? The executive branch commits over thirty felonies, releases a letter, and that’s the end of the story?

Well, enough of Lichtblau and Johnson’s muddying of the story. Now for the he said/she said “balanced reporting!”

For Times watchers, this is the best part:

Since the surveillance program was publicly disclosed in December 2005 by The New York Times…

Omitting, of course, the fact that although the story was published in December 2005, Bryan Calame, the Times public editor, shows how the Times had the story before the 2004 election, but suppressed it.

Finally, Josh Marshall in TPM catches the key point: Even safely re-elected Republicans like Heather Wilson are skeptical of these claims:

Administration officials “have convinced a single judge in a secret session, in a nonadversarial session, to issue a court order to cover the president’s terrorism surveillance program,” Ms. Wilson said in a telephone interview. She said Congress needed to investigate further to determine how the program is run.

Who knows? Maybe there is a Republican who wishes to restore Constitutional goverment. Stranger things have happened, though I can’t bring any to mind right now.

Finally, finally, finally, in the very last sentence, Lichtblau and Johnson edge up to the real point of this story:

“It’s not academic when the president violates the law,” said [Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the A.C.L.U]

No indeed. When you’ve got a President who commits thirty felonies and only then decides to obey the law, it’s “not academic.” It’s a Fucking Constitutional crisis, is what it is. Yet our famously free press refused to cover the story. And even the good guys are getting it wrong.

* As MJS says: “It’s as if there is an upper class of corporate beasties and plutocrats who have unimpeded control over the media…oh, wait. Just remove the ’as if’.”

NOTE Here is the archive of stories in Bush’s warrantless surveillance program.

UPDATE Lost in the shuffle, now that Bush claims that now he’s going to get warrants? All the Times he told us he was getting warrants, but lied.