Forget the Patriot Act, Just Spy on Us Straight Out

Here we were being worried about how the Patriot Act might continue to be used to spy on Americans. And all the while Bush had his National Security Agency (NSA, whose charter is to spy on ANYBODY EXCEPT AMERICANS) spying on us. Check this out from today's Washington Post.

President Bush signed a secret order in 2002 authorizing the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on U.S. citizens and foreign nationals in the United States, despite previous legal prohibitions against such domestic spying, sources with knowledge of the program said last night.

The super-secretive NSA, which has generally been barred from domestic spying except in narrow circumstances involving foreign nationals, has monitored the e-mail, telephone calls and other communications of hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of people under the program, the New York Times disclosed last night.

Of course, since they are only looking for people with connections to " al Qaeda and other terrorist groups overseas," they haven't spied on you personally. Because if there's one thing our government is good at, it's telling the difference between people who are connected to al Qaeda (Saddam) and those who aren't (Saddam... oh, hey, wait. They got that one wrong, didn't they).