A note I dropped to TPM—and more in sorrow than in anger, I should say:

Look at this headline:

Gonzales: NSA Wiretapping Now Subject to Court Approval

No, no, no, and again, no.

NSA wiretapping was always “subject to court approval”; FISA has always been the “exclusive means” (18 USC 2511(f)) for securing approval for such a program. However, the Bush administration ignored the law, and didn’t seek approval from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. In the process, in each 45-day purported authorization of the NSA program, the President, and those who carried out the orders, committed felonies.

That was Judge Taylor’s ruling in ACLU vs NSA — which, although under appeal and under stay, at least deserves a mention in your article!

If I want fact- and context-free stories driven by Republican talking points, I can read WaPo. I expect more, much more, from TPM, especially that part of it that bills itself as “muckraking.”

It’s very simple: Bush broke the law. The letter from Gonzales is an obvious and crude attempt to make that lawbreaking moot and enable Bush to evade accountability for crimes. Their framing makes it seem that that program was legal in the first place, and that the Bush administration put the program under the court’s jurisdiction to gain brownie points or becuase they take the role of the judiciary seriously.

Because Bush has broken the law, and because our famously free press—WaPo, the Times, and now even TPM will not cover that story—we are in the midst of a Constitutional Crisis.

Will the President be subject to the rule of law, or not? Bush, the Republicans, WaPo, the Times, and now even TPM by their actions answer “No.” I hope the Democrats, and more importantly, the American people, answer Yes.

NOTE In a classic example of the operation of the Overton window, when the Times broke the warrantless surveillance story (after helpfully holding it back until Bush took the 2004 election), Barron’s called for Bush’s impeachment because his actions were illegal. Now, not only is impeachment off the table, the illegality is off the table. And TPM helps take it off? What the hell is happening to us?

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

UPDATE Josh (not Justin Rood, who wrote the headline above) ends his coverage with what I assume is a rhetorical question: “Is it all a sleight of hand?. The issue is the illegality. There’s a court decision saying the program is not only illegal but unconstitutional, and none of the cover, not even at TPM, can mention this?

UPDATE Dragging to copy the headline, I missed “Gonzales:”, and added it in.

UPDATE Kevin gets it.

UPDATE This TPM front-pager’s just as bad:

Tony Snow tries to explain the new wiretapping compromise. How’d he do?

OK, I grant you, “tries” injects a note of skepticism.

However:

1. “compromise” — without irony quotes? No, the essence
of the story is lawbreaking by the executive branch. Not another Beltway Compromise. Nothing about that here.

2. “wiretapping” — No, the story is not just about voice
phone calls, which are wiretapped. The story is also
about email. The legal regimes for both are different,
and the technical issues are different. The administration
and the press have confused this issue from day one. This
story perpetuates that confusion.

Please, TPM, can we get some decent coverage on this? I’m begging you!

UPDATE Kossacks get it.