NEWS FLASH

Abu Gonzales announces that the administration, in an unprecedented move, will follow the law. Illegal wiretaps will stop and the FISA laws will be followed.

You gotta wonder, why now? Remember this program? This is the one vitally important to our national interests to protect us from the hoards of terrorists who are making phone calls. Remember how it was a national emergency for Bush to be able to listen and "data mine" phone calls? What has changed? Is it not as important now?

The utter capitulation of Bush on this program is proof of a couple of things. First, it wasn't yielding any intelligence. Second, the Democrats in Congress were going to have a ball tearing it apart. And third (and I think most important), by removing illegal wiretaps as an issue and pre-empting any Congressional hearings on the subject, the Bush administration leaves unchallenged the authority of the President to take such action "in an emergency". I hope Congress takes up the issue anyway passing legislation with language that clearly declares it illegal to not follow FISA procedures (or even better, eliminate FISA).

Update: Glenn Greenwald says that any celebration of the fact that the king has now decided to follow the law may be premature. Glenn suggests that one possibility is that, due to the vagueness of Abu's letter which unilaterally declares their intentions, they're still doing whatever they want, just in a different way.