John Dean, Nixon's lawyer, said today that Bush is the first president (that he knows of) to ever admit to an impeachable offense. Senators (democrats, so far, of course) who were privy to some of the briefings which were supposed to make all this spying legal are saying that nothing that THEY heard made clear what Bush was actually authorizing. There are procedures for getting a court order for surveillance, but this was essentially an end run around court orders and Congressional oversight, defended by little more than "we need to use every means at out disposal to 'protect ourselves against terrorism'."

   Watching (press secretary) Scott McClellan tap dance around a reporter's questions about 'exactly' how congress had 'oversight' in the matter would have been pretty funny if it was not so serious.