President Bush-Keep up the Heat!

On Friday the New York Times published an article headlined "Bush Secretly Lifted Some Limits on Spying in US after 9/11, Officials Say."

As is SOP for the Times, it is a misleading headline.  The first sentence of the second paragraph states that the "spying" was of international phone calls and emails tracked to possible "dirty" numbers linked to Al Qaeda.  I am pretty sure I want the government spying on those calls.

The article itself is full of quotes and innuendo from "nearly a dozen current and former officials."  The New York Times says it granted these folks anonymity because of the classified nature of the program, and that they discussed it with reporters for the New York Times because of "their concerns about the operation's legality and oversight."

Unfortunately the New York Times doesn't have as much respect for the security of the United States as it does for the "nearly a dozen current and former officials" identities and anonymity.

Unfortunately the legal expertise of the "nearly a dozen current and former officials" doesn't include the fact that publicly disclosing a classified presidential authorization and NSA operation is probably illegal, not to mention dangerous to our security and the lives of Americans.

The Department of Justice needs to immediately investigate this leak of classified information, and the other recent leaks (CIA secret prisons), as aggressively as the Democrats demanded the Valerie Plame leak be investigated.  We probably won't hear too many Democrats on the 6 o'clock news calling for that.

Senators Schumer and Kennedy certainly jumped at the opportunity to get on the "big brother" bandwagon and use this story as cover for their vote to reject the extension of the Patriot Act.

President Bush has reacted forcefully with a live radio address this morning explaining and defending his legal actions, and pointing out the irresponsible decision of the Senators who voted to filibuster the renewal of the Patriot Act.

I hired President Bush mostly because I thought he would be tougher than Vice President Gore on security issues.  Ordering the NSA to find out who in the US was potentially talking to Al Qaeda types is part of the gig. 

We don't live in the "make nice, never hurt anyone's feelings" world that the Democrats think we do.  Is it going to take another 3000 deaths on American soil for Senators Schumer and Kennedy and their buddies to figure this out? 

LATER (December 20, 2005 7:48p ET):  The Belmont Club has an interesting post discussing the more cut and dried instance of law breaking in this case.