[mrnoodle]

I don't know what I think about this yet. On one extreme, you have the government listening to any and all phone conversations, trying to pick anti-govt sentiment from personal conversations so that the speaker can be thrown into the gulag.

Not likely.

On the other side of the spectrum, you have someone planning a terrorist act, calling bin Laden in the Caribbean to get the go-code, and we're unable to do anything about it because, by gosh, it's ILLEGAL to listen in on a phone conversation.

Not likely.

The whole thing is looking like a political witch-hunt, with Bush trying (and failing) to fend off the people who want his ass no matter what the cost to the country. The reality is, if the government wants you, they know where to find you, and won't let a little thing like the law stand in the way (unless it's something that might get caught in the public radar, in which case, the spin doctors are mobilized). On paper, that looks like a bad thing.

But if someone thinks they can operate a terrorist cell within our country and hide behind the Constitution while thumbing their nose at us, that's a worse thing, and people will die if it happens.