It's getting surreal, this dispute over the program-that-must-not-be-explained. Since no one can mention details, all are free to dispute who said what and about which.

Since data-mining is clearly at the heart of the FISA flap, the issue must be the need to destroy records after 72 hrs. Obviously NSA and Justice can’t ask for a warrant for "unknown unknowns"; the whole reason for data-mining is to find interesting subjects. But since they can sweep without a warrant, and hold data for three days, what’s the flap?

I think there are two possibilities: The first is that they want a longer time window for allowing data to match up, and the second is that they are worried that destroying data might not be complete, if some department squirrels some away.

Taking the first, certainly this is what intelligence-gathering is all about. We go looking for troublemakers, just in case it helps. But there is no presumption of innocence for people not on American-controlled soil. Files are kept open for decades, waiting for a telltale item. Allowing surveillance of communications that include a "US person" (FISA-speak) tosses presumption of innocence out the window.

Since the sweeping is done by search algorithms, it's in a gray area whether surveillance is being performed at all. No one calls out "I've got one"; it's the software that flashes an alert. It wouldn't matter, if the resulting data were destroyed after the window passed, that no warrant was acquired. And if it was a live one, a warrant would be forthcoming.

But what if there is a meta-program that collects hits, sets them aside, and waits for more. Now no one is monitoring the live hits, and no warrant has been issued. Then comes an actionable hit (not that there have been any yet, but sometimes you get lucky), and the data that developed it is a string of weeks or months. Now what?

The second possibility intrigues me. NSA personnel were apparently worried about their legal liability, thus blew the whistle. Are they now worried that if any data surfaced later it would come back to bite them? Even with need-to-know compartmentalization, we all know how easy it is to copy data now. It’s not like the days of cameras and carbon paper, and if an employee failed to demagnetize his hard drive data might still be readable.

The telecoms were known to be worried about liability (with pending suits) but this doesn’t so much blanket them as to give them no choice but to comply.

Why did Pelosi and Reid cave? Spooked by scare stories? It might simply boil down to this---if the non-legal nature of non-FISA surveillance was affirmed by Congress, they would have painted themselves into the impeachment corner.

I think we need some IT experts on Congressional staffs. I'm no expert but it seems illogical to claim there is any difficulty separating out the sources and locations of cellphone and email communication. But the new FISA law allows surveillance to continue while a plan to show how this will be done is prepared. After 90 days it will be presented to the FISA court. Are the judges communciations experts? They have to rule on a plan where they will be told X is possible but Y is not, and how will they be able to decide?

Can someone tell me why there is any question? Brent Budowsky reminded listeners of Randi Rhodes that at the time FISA was written the operating assumption was that a typical nuclear-launch warning time was 24 minutes. They were well aware of the need to act quickly.

But now there is some burden, supposedly, in having to destroy collected data after 72 hrs. absent a warrant. No one has shown yet that there was any difficulty getting those warrants. And we still don't know why Comey and Mueller, and other DoJ lawyers, were upset, and why Gonzales had to go on his midnight ride.

I feel Congress was bamboozled by the WH into believing that the discrimination of call destinations and email sources is hard, and warrants are inappropriate. And what was the rush? The goal, we thought, was to exclude from the warrant requirement calls and emails that merely passed the routes here, but were sourced and directed elsewhere. That didn't seem hard, but now communications between here and elsewhere can be collected (and stored) if the "target" is the external party, without a warrant. And who decides that there is a reasonable need to surveill this target? Not the court, but our friend the Attorney General.

Did the WH trot out a dog-and-pony show about AQ cells here? Did they make it seem like August '01? (When the WH did bupkis.) What the hell is going on? I'm ready to bail out on the Democratic party. At least my Illinois Senators and Danny Davis, my Rep, voted against it.