First, Bush said:

Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires — a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we’re talking about chasing down terrorists, we’re talking about getting a court order before we do so. It’s important for our fellow citizens to understand, when you think Patriot Act, constitutional guarantees are in place when it comes to doing what is necessary to protect our homeland, because we value the Constitution.

and Malkin believed him.

Then he said

The activities I authorized are reviewed approximately every 45 days. Each review is based on a fresh intelligence assessment of terrorist threats to the continuity of our government and the threat of catastrophic damage to our homeland. During each assessment, previous activities under the authorization are reviewed. The review includes approval by our nation’s top legal officials, including the Attorney General and the Counsel to the President. I have reauthorized this program more than 30 times since the September the 11th attacks, and I intend to do so for as long as our nation faces a continuing threat from al Qaeda and related groups.

and Malkin believed him.

Alberto Gonzales said

The operators out at NSA tell me that we don’t have the speed and the agility that we need, in all circumstances, to deal with this new kind of enemy. You have to remember that FISA was passed by the Congress in 1978. There have been tremendous advances in technology —

Q But it’s been kind of retroactively, hasn’t it?

ATTORNEY GENERAL GONZALES: — since then. Pardon me?

Q It’s been done retroactively before, hasn’t it?

ATTORNEY GENERAL GONZALES: What do you mean, “retroactively”?

Q You just go ahead and then you apply for the FISA clearance, because it’s damn near automatic.

ATTORNEY GENERAL GONZALES: If we — but there are standards that have to be met, obviously, and you’re right, there is a procedure where we — an emergency procedure that allows us to make a decision to authorize — to utilize FISA, and then we go to the court and get confirmation of that authority.

But, again, FISA is very important in the war on terror, but it doesn’t provide the speed and the agility that we need in all circumstances to deal with this new kind of threat.

and Malkin believed him.

Now we’re told:

The government is collecting “external” data on domestic phone calls but is not intercepting “internals,” a term for the actual content of the communication, according to a U.S. intelligence official familiar with the program. This kind of data collection from phone companies is not uncommon; it’s been done before, though never on this large a scale, the official said. The data are used for “social network analysis,” the official said, meaning to study how terrorist networks contact each other and how they are tied together.

And apparently, not to believe this is tinfoil hattery.

Does one have to have the pattern recognition region of the brain removed to become a right-winger?