Jeff Huber has been ALL over the FISA wiretap story at his blog, Pen and Sword. If you’re not reading Jeff, you’re missing some good information. There are too many to list. Because blogs place new stories on top, you have to go there, work down to Monday, December 26th and just read to catch up. He’s also cross-posted many of these articles at the ePluribus site.

Now, whenever someone in Bu$hCo shoots himself in his johnso err, foot, there is a large community of enablers, explainers, lackeys, running dogs and straight out paid explainers to massage the facts and spin the story to maintain the fiction of the God-King who is perfect in all ways.

I learned about one example, Michelle Malkin, who interestingly enough seems to believe that all foreigners (except her – she’s Filippina by birth) should be immediately interned in the interests of National Security, and kept there until – I dunno, until the starve to death, maybe. Ms Malkin has taken up sword and shield in defense of her liege lord, the God-King, and carefully established the interesting logic stream that this illegal FISA revelation is a terribly serious matter, lives are at stake here, because now Osama bin Forgotten knows we are listening, and it’s just like when Valerie Plame was outted by “someone” and why aren’t the left wing maniacs screaming for the blood of the person who endangered National Security by telling Osama we’re on to him? After all, those evil leftwing maniacs were so dead set on hanging whoever endangered National Security by revealing that Valerie Plame used to do something vaguely covert.

By the way, Ms Malkin, sadly, is a prime example of leading intellectualism in winger philosophy and blogging.

Over at firedoglake, Jane takes Ms Malkin to task and briefly explains the difference between a security leak (Plame) and whistleblowing (FISA searches). One is bad, one is good. Using some extremely forceful and relevant commentary by Judge Tatel in his decision to deny the petition from Matt Cooper and Judith Miller to quash Prosecutor Fitzgerald’s subpoena, he writes:

The leak of Plame's apparent employment, moreover, had marginal news value. To be sure, insofar as Plame's CIA relationship may have helped explain her husband's selection for the Niger trip, that information could bear on her husband's credibility, and thus contribute to public debate over the president's "sixteen words." Compared to the damage of undermining covert intelligence-gathering, however, this slight news value cannot, in my view, justify privileging the leaker's identity.

So, the revelation by the leaker of the subject’s name is not important, but the results of that leak are very serious.

In Snoopgate, the leak is vital, of course, since it reveals years of malfeasance and misfeasance by Mr Bush and his associated cabal. They broke numerous laws, ignored others, and generally trashed both the US Constitution and various parts of the US Code in order to do something that they could have done legally, but for some reason chose to do illegally. The identity is protected by the Federal whistleblower law, despite the right wingnts’ teeth gnashing rage to flay someone for exposing another scandal.

Let us speculate. Since they could legally wiretap ANY foreign telephone, cell phone, or computer overseas by charter and any communication emanating from said devices into the US and then have a 72 hour post facto approval from the FISA court, they were in the clear. They also had that 72 hour window to tap any communications from those putative telephones, cell phones and computers inside the US with the same 72 hour window. They had the time to do it right and deliberately chose not to. Why would they do that? Are they just so enamored of breaking the laws that they seize every opportunity to do so? Do they believe that because they have the White House, both chambers of Congress, so many voting machines in so many states, and so many alleged “journalists” on their payroll that they are impervious?

There’s been speculation that they were tapping the computers and telephones of journalists who had interviewing relationships with various overseas terror cells, writers who have actually produced news with their contacts. Like the Secretary of State, I am not a lawyer, but, also like her, I have a belief that this sort of target would most likely get a warrant from FISA.

What sort of electronic eavesdropping would not be approved by a FISA court? A Court that has denied only 4 applications out of some 1900-odd in the last 4 years? Probably eavesdropping on political opponents, “unfriendly” journalists, e.g. those not on the payroll, and, of course known and suspected dissenters within the US. With some 58% of the polled population disapproving of Mr Bush and his actions in the White House, I’ll bet there are a lot of files.