[kcorbitt]

dgunn, what a lot of people are upset over isn't necessarily that the government is recording a lot of conversations per se. It's the fact that this program is constitutionally and ethically questionable and that it was enacted without any public debate or supervision whatsoever. America behaves in some ways like a democracy, and big issues like this deserve to be discussed and weighed in the public forum.

In general, the government taking powers and responsibilities upon itself without a public discussion tends to be a bad deal for everyone. We've all lived under presidents that we didn't particularly like or trust. If we let the executive branch off the hook for behaving this way that reinforces executive independence and gives more legitimacy to the next guy, who we may like even less, to do something even worse.

There are exceptions, explicit and implied, to this process for states of emergency when decisive action needs to be taken immediately. But it's untenable to claim that America has been in a continuous state of emergency for the past twelve years and that there hasn't been a moment to step back and evaluate where we're at -- and where we're going.