Oh for Gawd's sakes. Tom Brokaw is on Matthews boo-hooing that this NSA story stepped on Junior's wonderful Iraq triumph. He explains that when you are at war you need to do things that are difficult and believes that most people in the country will agree that the administration needed to spy on Americans after 9/11. He agrees with analyst Roger Cressy (who I used to think was sane) that once the "window" of a possible impending attack closed they should have gone up to the hill and sought permission to keep spying on Americans with no judicial oversight. (I haven't heard about this "window" before. Tom and Roger both seem to have a fantasy that the administration would not simply say that the "window" remains open as long as evil exists in the world.)
Look, the problem here, again, is not one of just spying on Americans, as repulsively totalitarian as that is. It's that the administration adopted John Yoo's theory of presidential infallibility. But, of course, it wasn't really John Yoo's theory at all; it was Dick Cheney's muse, Richard Nixon who said, "when the President does it, that means it's not illegal."
From what we know what they did is clearly, unambiguously, illegal. If Tom Brokaw thinks Waterboard Gonzales and Three Cheers for Fascism Yoo should be able to shove a camera up his ass jut because they want to then Tom Brokaw should start lobbying Congress to let them. I personally think it isn't good policy to let the president do whatever the hell he wants just because he says so but then maybe all that checks and balances stuff I learned about was just liberal propaganda.