1.) From the NY Times via georgia10 over at DailyKos (with many more terrific links within the post), an exchange at yesterday's Senate Intelligence Committee hearing between Senator Wyden (D-OR) and General Hayden (NSA director at the time the warrantless domestic spying program was initiated):

A similarly revealing sparring session came when Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, pressed the intelligence officials about whether a controversial Pentagon data-mining program called Total Information Awareness had been effectively transferred to the intelligence agencies after being shut down by Congress.

Mr. Negroponte and the F.B.I. director, Robert S. Mueller III, both said they did not know. Then came the turn of Gen. Michael V. Hayden, who headed N.S.A. for six years before becoming the principal deputy director of national intelligence last spring.

"Senator," General Hayden said, "I'd like to answer in closed session."

2.) From the AP via RawStory, George H.W. Bush (41), Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney have apparently tried once before to get a warrantless wire tap program similar to the one George W. Bush (43) authorized for the NSA to conduct, and is currently under scrutiny for, when they were with the Ford administration (Bush 41 was director of the CIA at the time). This, of course, was shot down after some intense debate. But times were different then, there was no legitimate threat to the US at the time like al Qaeda is today (except for the Soviets during that whole 'Cold War' thingamajig):

George H.W. Bush, then director of the CIA, wanted to ensure "no unnecessary diminution of collection of important foreign intelligence" under the proposal to require judges to approve terror wiretaps, according to a March 1976 memorandum he wrote to the Justice Department. Bush also complained that some major communications companies were unwilling to install government wiretaps without a judge's approval. Such a refusal "seriously affects the capabilities of the intelligence community," Bush wrote.

In another document, Jack Marsh, a White House adviser, outlined options for Ford over the wiretap legislation. Marsh alerted Ford to objections by Bush as CIA director and by Rumsfeld, Henry Kissinger and Brent Scowcroft over the scope of a provision to require judicial oversight of wiretaps. At the time, Rumsfeld was defense secretary, Kissinger was secretary of state and Scowcroft was the White House national security adviser.

Some experts weren't surprised the cast of characters in this national debate remained largely unchanged over 30 years.

"People don't change their stripes," said Kenneth C. Bass a former senior Justice Department lawyer who oversaw such wiretap requests during the Carter administration.

3.) Then there's this, from the AP via AmericaBlog, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts says Bush's Domestic Spying Program IS constitutional. This, of course, from the man who still continues to stall Phase II of the Senate investigation into bungled pre-war Iraq intelligence. This would be the part where the part where Senate Intelligence Committee actually look into HOW THE INTELLIGENCE WAS USED. An investigation that has NEVER taken place, despite what you may have heard from the Bush White House and Republican apologists.

And finally for today

4.) From the NYTimes via TChris over at TalkLeft:

[Even though] companies that provide Internet service and run Web sites ... promise to protect the privacy of their users, they routinely hand over the most intimate information in response to legal demands from criminal investigators and lawyers fighting civil cases.
...
When it comes to e-mail and Internet service records, "the average citizen would be shocked to find out how adept your average law enforcement officer is at finding information," said Paul Ohm, who recently left the Justice Department's computer crime and intellectual property section.