More NSA Revelations

USA Today has an article this morning about how the NSA, under an executive order signed by Bush, have been secretely collecting phone records of tens of millions of Americans with no ties to terrorism [link].

As I wrote in January [link], every article about the illegal NSA wiretapping program stated as fact that the target of all of the investigations were people who were suspected of having ties to terrorist groups. As I said then, the only evidence to support this limit is simply that the Bush administration says so. There is still no information available about the extent of the program. Now, more information is coming out showing that they were lying then. Are we to believe now that this latest revelation is the full extent of their abuse of power?

As a side note, the reaction to these revelations by the right-wing puntits is very troubling. It used to be, I believe, that conservatives feared "big government" invasions into private lives. It seems their reaction has been pretty universal. Essentially, the problem is just that these "disloyal" officials keep leaking this information.

I can't forgive the Democratic party for allowing this to happen. Members of both parties were briefed when the program began, and they did nothing. Then, they put up almost no fight at all when the Republican controlled intelligence committees refused to hold an investigation into the secret wiretapping program.