The other day I posted the Justice Departments explanation of the legal powers of the president to conduct warrantless eavesdropping of terrorists.

The liberal response has been along the lines of "why not use the FISA courts?" I didn't cover that, but Gen. Michael Hayden did:

Gen. Michael Hayden said the NSA program was more effective than the FISA system because investigators were able to target suspected communications if they had "reason to believe" that someone is connected to Al Qaeda, rather than the "probable cause" standard required by the FISA court. The difference, he said, is that the detection methods don't target individuals but trap communications. The probable cause standard, on the other hand, relates to individuals.

Hayden made clear NSA has often used FISA, especially after Sept. 11, but that in some cases, it is not as effective.

"The purpose of all of this is not to collect reams of intelligence, but to detect and prevent attacks. The intelligence community has neither the time, the resources nor the legal authority to read communications that aren't likely to protect us. And NSA has no interest in doing so. These are communications that we have reason to believe are Al Qaeda communications," Hayden said.

He also noted that in addition to numerous Justice Department lawyers having said the new program was legal, three senior lawyers at NSA were separately asked about the legality of it before it began. They all said that it was legal and he noted these were people who had rejected some techniques in the past and were not people in the habit of "giving hall passes."

Hayden argued that had the NSA program been in place before the Sept. 11 attacks, the government may had been able to identify the hijackers before they struck.

"You know, I actually find this a little odd. After all the findings of the 9/11 commission and other bodies about the failure to share intelligence, I'm up here feeling like I have to explain pushing data to those who might be able to use it," he said.

Someone should explain the concept of restrain to the Crat leadership. There are generally plenty of things any administration does that merit genuine criticism, and those are the ones you can get the best traction on. On the other hand, indiscriminate criticism is highly problematic, particularly when you get shot down so easily.

Two recent examples of indiscriminate criticism are the entire Alito hearing and of course this NSA leak. The Crats end up looking like losers and worse, fools. On the other hand, the Abramoff scandal is something you can and should work with, unfortunately the final answer to this question is not something the Crats can really deal with--reducing the size of the federal government and moving responsibilities and revenues to the states.