Simple domestic spying questions for a simple president

For as long as we've known that the Bush administration routinely breaks the law by spying on American citizens without required warrants, the standard line from George W. Bush and his minions has been that only international transmissions are snooped and, within that select group, only those communicating with known terrorists are spied upon.

Now we have the bombshell disclosure yesterday that the National Security Agency (NSA) has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using most of the major phone carriers in the United States.

If an American citizen "…is talking to al Qaeda, we want to know why," our fearless leader has said on many occasions since first getting caught with his hand on our telephones and keyboards.

Indeed, it was just yesterday that Bush said that he had authorized the NSA to "…intercept the international communications of people with known links to al Qaeda and related terrorist organizations. In other words, if al Qaeda or their associates are making calls into the United States or out of the United States, we want to know what they're saying."

And, of course, you would need a calculator to figure out how many times those same assurances have been given by outgoing White House Press Secretary Scott "The Lyin' King" McClellan.