Wish this wasn't so easy to predict...

(written about a week and a half ago. I imagine I had a good reason for not posting it then, but I've forgotten what it was...)

So now that the Senate Intel committee isn't going to investigate the wiretapping issue, Gonzales can open up a little more about the real deal.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales suggested for the first time Thursday that a president might have the legal authority to order wiretapping without a warrant on communications between Americans that occur exclusively within the United States

Even if you were dumb enough not to see this coming, you should be able to read between the lines and recognize that's Gonzales for "We're already tapping domestic calls." All of sudden more conservatives with brains are starting to take notice. Here's Lee at Right-thinking:

I’ll say this: there is absolutely no way, under any circumstances, you can consider yourself a conservative (someone who believes in the principle of limited government) and support this type of operation. End of story. You can be a Republican, but you can’t be a conservative.

Welcome to the party Lee. George Will is a conservative who's been arguing that for a while. Probably in the Republican camp is Andrew McCarthy. This was his rebuttal to George Will.

Will can suggest otherwise only by misrepresenting the program as "warrantless surveillance...targeting American citizens on American soil." In fact, the program targets al Qaeda, a foreign terrorist organization with which we are at war, and which is energetically working (it tells us unabashedly) toward a strike against our homeland which would dwarf the carnage of 9/11. The program targets, moreover, only international communications by this foreign enemy, some of which cross U.S. borders.

Andrew says: Oops, sorry George. I was just, you know, hacking.

Who could have predicted the Administration would both break the law and mislead people about how they did it? (ok fine, I did) To the last vestiges of faithful and foolish who won't believe the administration can do wrong without concrete proof (or even then)...isn't it a good thing no one's been allowed to investigate? To Lee and Will, there's only one recourse: congressional Democrat subpoena power in 2007. Republicans aren't going to clean this up themselves.