An article in the New York Times, discussing the fact that nothing has changed on the NSA wiretapping front – the program to listen to international al Qaeda phone calls (even ones entering or exiting the U.S.) continues with no Congressional action to give it clearer legal authority and no resolution to the court cases – begins oddly:
When President Bush went on national television one Saturday morning last December to acknowledge the existence of a secret wiretapping program outside the courts, the fallout was fierce and immediate.
If you didn’t know the history, you’d almost believe that the President up and spilled the beans on this secret program on his own initiative – curiously absent is the role of the Times itself in revealing the program, an essential part of the news story (as well as of the political controversy) that the Times can’t bring itself to mention.