My question was basically: why use someone like NSA for a task that doesn't require their particular expertise.

Well, that's the $64,000 question, isn't it?

Whatever they were doing, it's something they feared a Republican Congress, in the post-9/11 frenzy, wouldn't agree to, for the good of the nation.

Name one legitimate activity that would describe.

The whole point of the freakin' FISA court is that we don't have to sit around wondering what the Administration was doing and whether it was legit and just trusting them to do what's right.

But membership also has its burdens. The "gang" — Republican Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas and Rep. Peter Hoekstra of Michigan and Democrats Rockefeller and Rep. Jane Harman of California — is virtually gagged from discussing anything from meetings with anyone outside the group — not even other senators, staffers or lawyers with security clearance on the intelligence committees. “You can't discuss it with anybody as long as you live,” Rockefeller said Monday.

And for Rockefeller and Harmon, the senior Democrats on the Senate and House intelligence committees, respectively, membership can be even more problematic. If they want to object to anything the administration is doing, they're forbidden from doing so publicly.

Now, Sen Roberts seems to think Rockefeller had some method of recourse:

Roberts listed options he said Rockefeller could have pursued, including discussing his concerns with Roberts and raising objections with the Vice President during various briefings. "Forgive me if I find this to be inconsistent and a bit disingenuous," Roberts concluded in his statement.

But seriously - raising objections with Roberts or Cheney?!? What exactly do you think that would have accomplished?

Agreed impeachment wasn't going to happen. Merely noting it among the array of Congress' power to deal with a lawless president.

My strong inclination--with all the disclaimers appropriate from the known unknowns detailed above--is that the administration is operating within the boundaries of executive authority, if perhaps using some creative interpretations of the applicable laws. Given that the purposes were not nefarious and the history of executive power, that's hardly impeachable.

The Members could have held closed sessions on the issue. I recall none on this issue.

Impeachment would never fly.

If Rockefeller et. al. honestly believed what Bush was doing was illegal, they could have forced him to stop, threatening exposure or even (in the case of House Members) impeachment proceedings.

He *wasn't* "briefing Congress." He wasn't even briefing the members of the intel committees as required by law. He was briefing 8 members and telling them they were required to keep quiet. Look at Sen. Rockefeller's scared-kitten note.

Drum's comment is dead-on, and makes the case for this administration's deliberate flouting of the law.

--Now, to be contrary, "what if" they actually ARE data mining, but they feel the need to lie about it so that the bad guys won't realize they're doing it?

Remember Eisenhower, unable to shut up the Dems about the "missile gap" because the intel that would've done so was classified (U-2 product).

The president also focused on classified briefings that the White House gave for some senior leaders in Congress. "It's amazing that people say to me, 'Well, he's just breaking the law.' If I wanted to break the law, why was I briefing Congress?"

This is horribly misleading. He wasn't briefing "Congress"--only a very small number of members who were not allowed to discuss the nature of the briefings with their constituents or many colleagues.