Wow, Rep. Peter Hoekstra just loves making stuff up to score political points:

Michigan Republican Rep. Peter Hoekstra also suggested some unauthorized leaks could have been deliberate attempts to help al Qaeda.

“More frequently than what we would like, we find out that the intelligence community has been penetrated, not necessarily by al Qaeda, but by other nations or organizations,” he said.

“I don’t have any evidence. But from my perspective, when you have information that is leaked that is clearly helpful to our enemy, you cannot discount that possibility,” he added.

Uh, yeah.

When it becomes acceptable for a sitting Congressman to call intelligence analysts traitors without any evidence, we’ve lost something to the terrorists. It’s even worse when the officials leak no actual intelligence but only evidence of possible Constitutional violations by the White House.

I realize that it might be easier to scare Americans about the idea of a vast record of their phone calls and the data in them, but I’m disappointed in the nature of the discussion around the newly disclosed NSA spying program. The issue isn’t the fact that the government feels that this helps the war against terrorism. That’s an interesting question worth debating but ultimately not the point.

The point is that the law makes it very likely that this program is illegal. Even if you believe the President is behaving in good faith, he has to follow the law. Ultimately, this is what this issue boils down to. While it’s not as sexy as “Big Brother is watching,” it is accurate.

USA Today also reported that the NSA was aware that it didn’t have the legal authority to do this:

In addition, the agency suggested that Qwest’s foot-dragging might affect its ability to get future classified work with the government. Like other big telecommunications companies, Qwest already had classified contracts and hoped to get more.

Unable to get comfortable with what NSA was proposing, Qwest’s lawyers asked NSA to take its proposal to the FISA court. According to the sources, the agency refused.

The NSA’s explanation did little to satisfy Qwest’s lawyers. “They told (Qwest) they didn’t want to do that because FISA might not agree with them,” one person recalled. For similar reasons, this person said, NSA rejected Qwest’s suggestion of getting a letter of authorization from the U.S. attorney general’s office. A second person confirmed this version of events.

It’s one thing to take advantage of a gray area or a loophole and exploit it. It’s another to recognize that maybe there isn’t loophole, and to actively avoid oversight by the other branches of government.

And that’s what the most amazing about this whole story, including the previously disclosed NSA program. All they have to do is get the law changed and the NSA could’ve continued with the entire program. If the law was passed by this Congress, it probably wouldn’t even have any oversight requirements. It’s telling, then, that the President didn’t get the law changed. A Republican dominated Congress filled with spineless leadership like Sen. Frist and Rep. DeLay didn’t pass a new law authorizing these programs.

It’s like the White House said, “You’re not the boss of me!” to Congress like a petulant little child. The White House needs a timeout and a reminder that Congress and the Judiciary does have oversight over these programs. It’s curious why the White House would have such a problem with oversight in the first place.

Just ask to have the law changed. Let’s put in the right oversight controls and move on with the running of this country.

Seriously, how else do you explain this:

BIDEN: Thank you very much.

General, how has this revelation damaged the program?

I’m almost confused by it but, I mean, it seems to presuppose that these very sophisticated Al Qaida folks didn’t think we were intercepting their phone calls.

I mean, I’m a little confused. How did it damage this?

GONZALES: Well, Senator, I would first refer to the experts in the Intel Committee who are making that statement, first of all. I’m just the lawyer.

And so, when the director of the CIA says this should really damage our intel capabilities, I would defer to that statement. I think, based on my experience, it is true — you would assume that the enemy is presuming that we are engaged in some kind of surveillance.

But if they’re not reminded about it all the time in the newspapers and in stories, they sometimes forget.

(LAUGHTER)

And you’re amazed at some of the communications that exist. And so when you keep sticking it in their face that we’re involved in some kind of surveillance, even if it’s unclear in these stories, it can’t help but make a difference, I think.

Is he serious? For crying out loud, I remember that there are cops on the highway when I drive. Terrorists capable of hiding from the combined might of the CIA, NSA, and FBI forget they’re under surveillance? The disdain for our collective intelligence is amazing.

(via Atrios)

Steve Clemons has a good article up about how Bush’s defense of the NSA program misses the point entirely.

Some more on the NSA domestic spying scandal…

The Bush administration is doing a great job of acting guilty of some wrongdoing. While Congress is calling for investigations into whether the President broke any laws, the administration has launched an investigation into who leaked the story to the NYT. Which would be alright except for the fact that, um, the Bush administration knew about the leak over a year ago and chose to do nothing about it. On a related note, the new Public Editor for the Times is pissed that the Times’ Keller and Sulzberger (managing editor and publisher, respectively) aren’t offering any explanation of why they held the story up for a year or why they chose to publish the story now. More discussion at PressThink.

Of course, none of that gets at the substance of the story, and even that’s not going well for the administration. At the center of the latest revelations lies Deputy Attorney General James Comey. Seems that in 2004, he refused to sign off on the program, causing Gonzales and Card to visit Ashcroft in the hospital to try to get him to sign off on it.

Whether this is significant or not depends greatly on the judgement and credibility of Comey. If his objection to the program reflected a wider concern among the top Justice Dept. staff attorneys, then this is indeed significant. If not, well, I doubt all the folks in the administration or even a particular agency agree on everything all the time. As long as the final decisions reflect the best judgement of the staff, that’s OK. Of course, this administration has overridden consensus reports from the staff in the past. Remember the Texas redistricting case or the FDA process on RU486.

Interestingly enough, Comey was the one that convinced Ashcroft to recuse himself and appoint Fitzgerald to investigate the Plame case. Jane Hamsher runs down the particulars. Like Fitzgerald, Comey seems like a by-the-book kind of guy. Is it surprising that the honest ones seem to be causing the administration so much trouble?

Update: Kevin Drum, being a better writer, sums it up best:

I think it’s safe to say that something is seriously wrong here. After all, we now know that the FISA court was unhappy about the NSA program; Congress was unwilling to pass a law authorizing it; and both John Ashcroft and his chief deputy — in an election year! — eventually came to feel that the program was being abused. That’s the trifecta: senior officials in all three branches of government felt that the program went beyond the president’s authority.

Update 2: Jane Hamsher has more on Comey on her blog.