Oh, and Merry Christmas and all that.

If you weren't pissed off already, perhaps this will get you: according to the New York Times, the NSA hasn't limited its spying to the international telephone calls of people with links to Al Qaida. Apparently they have, with the help of telecommunications companies, been scanning assloads of random phone calls and email correspondence in search for terrorist activity.
They're not releasing the names of the telecommunications companies--lucky them, because yeah, the conservative web logs are full of people who don't give a rat's ass about their civil liberties, but Americans as a whole don't put up with that kind of shit. Most Americans (72%) are against the Pentagon's PR campaign in Iraq.

The FBI has also been getting in on the action, covertly monitoring the homes and businesses of American Muslims for changes in radiation levels. Now, it's really sweet of the FBI to be making sure that our nation's Muslims don't get radiation poisoning, but that really isn't their job.