***UPDATE***
Hot Air says that this is old news, and has video of the President's comments. Expose the Left has video of the President's comments as well.

***UPDATE - SURPRISE, SURPRISE MEDIA LYING... SAYS NSA "MONITORING" CALLS***

No one sould be shocked, but once again the media is lying. Here's a Yahoo! News search on 'NSA monitoring'. Dig through and find your favorite offender.

As always, I like to pick on the Yahoo.com home page... The top headline currently reads: NSA monitoring phone calls of millions in U.S. (see screen shot at right). What's odd is when you click the link, the page you land on has a different, but still dishonest headline: NSA has massive database of Americans' phone calls. Wrong again guys, no one is "monitoring" and they don't have a database of your "calls", they have a list of call records, and no information about the content of the calls.

***UPDATE***
Both sides of the blogosphere are weighing in. The left is looney as ever, you've got to scroll down to see what the DailyKOS has to say. Outside the Beltway sums the media spin of this up in one line (versus my rambling): "Calls. Call records. Same thing, right? Um, no." Scroll to the bottom for more blogger reaction...

(original post below)
The media and liberal leakers inside the NSA decided that they hadn't undermined national security in an effort to hurt the President lately, so USA Today stepped up. My guess is that they figure that the President's numbers have virtually bottomed out for the time being, even going up in the most recent Fox poll, and there wasn't really enough controversy around the President's new CIA chief nominee General Hayden, so USA Today thought they'd get some anonymous sources together to "expose" a program, and make it sound like something it's not, and put a bunch of pictures of Hayden all over the article.

I wonder if we should expect John Kerry to be on one of the Sunday shows this weekend commeding these leakers for this "good leak". Either way, don't be surprised if the media tries to turn this in to this week's "Bush administration scandal" though. They do this constantly, and almost always the story eventually fades away but the fact that they manufactured a controversy hurts the Presdient enough. The media is fully aware of this, and they constantly use this hit and run tactic to hurt him, even when the war on terror suffers as a result.

(slight tangent alert)
The old saying I heard once is that it's like being told you have cancer, a few weeks later you go in for surgery to remove it and the doctor says "there's nothing here", and sows you back up. Sure, you're not dead, but you're stuck with that huge scar now. This is why the media just lobs these things out one after another, and we've seen the impact. Not that we haven't all proved the media is liberally biased hundreds of times, I think public opinion about the economy is the perfect example to use. I explain in this post that almost half of the country isn't aware that we aren't in a recession. Here's the main point, recession isn't an opinion, either we are in one or not. Only 51% of the public are aware that we are not, while 30% think we are, and 19% aren't sure. Whether you agree on motives, can we agree that the media isn't doing it's job if almost half of the country doesn't know the FACT that we aren't in a recession. I'm not even going to list of job growth, unemployment, housing, wages, GDP, consumer confidence, consumer spending, productivity, etc. etc. Although I do want to mention, incase you missed it, that April 2006 came in second for all time tax revenue taken in by the government. Yes, you read that right libs, lower taxes, higher tax revenue.
(end tangent)

Back to this NSA "scandal", here's the deal... You've probably heard in plenty of court cases that are covered on the news, where the court obtains "phone records". In case you weren't aware, the phone companies have a record of all of your calls. Not listening in, just what numbers you dialed, that kind of thing. After 9/11 the NSA asked the major phone companies for access to these records. Three companies, AT&T, Verizon, and BellSouth complied, while Qwest didn't (and has not). Oh yeah, and the part you're going to hear so much about, these records were obtained "without warrants".

So you better board up the windows and start corresponding only via ham radio or some type of morris code device, because you know evil Bush and his NSA minions are spying on your calls... You know because they have the time and the resources to listen in on you liberals calling your parents to send you more money while you start yet another year of college, instead of entering the real world.

Basically the NSA is looking for calling patterns, etc. in hopes of catching Al Qaeda. Just kidding, it's really Bush's latest method of voter intimidation.

As I said, this USA Today story is the big exclusive, and as usual relies COMPLETELY on anonymous sources. What a convenient time for this to happen, as the former head of the NSA is up for the CIA chief job. Just a coincidence I'm sure, right USA Today and liberal leakers? How lucky that they managed to stick a bunch of pictures of him in the article too!

The article is extremely long and extremely repetitive, so I'll just give you the opening excerpt, and let you read the whole thing at your leisure.

The National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth, people with direct knowledge of the arrangement told USA TODAY.

The NSA program reaches into homes and businesses across the nation by amassing information about the calls of ordinary Americans — most of whom aren't suspected of any crime. This program does not involve the NSA listening to or recording conversations. But the spy agency is using the data to analyze calling patterns in an effort to detect terrorist activity, sources said in separate interviews.

So what's the big deal? I don't get it, but you can rest assured the libs and "civil liberties" groups will be screaming about this, despite never explaining their problem with it. They'll shout "privacy", but won't explain how anyone is being harmed, and don't expect them to protest YellowBook for publicly publishing phone numbers.

Anyway, the article goes on and on, repeating the same boring information over and over hoping that a gigantic article will make you believe that there is really some controversy here. To the libs that this is going to set off, I'd like to ask you what you'd do if a terrorist attack happens, and this program, or the terrorist surveillance program could have tipped us off? Would you say, "but at least no one heard me call my Grandma!", or would you scream at the President for not protecting us, that's what it all comes down to. Some goes for open borders liberals, if a terrorist came in to the country via the Mexican border.

Others:
Before I get to the Right side of the blogosphere, I have to point out this sarcastic line from the DailyKOS, that is hilarious for a reason they didn't intend:

Obviously, they're fighting terror. Because every single American might just be participating in terrorism. So they really need to keep track of all of our phone calls. It's obvious, right? Obvious, but not particularly legal, though since when has that stopped BushCo?

Again, that was sarcasm, so I'd like to ask the KOS kids: Are you advocating racial profiling then? You are implying that this isn't to fight terrorism because it's EVERYONE... then how do you propose they choose who to keep phone RECORDS (not calls) of? I submit that if the NSA was only keeping records of brown skinned people or Muslims you'd be screaming racial profiling. Let's face it, you'd rather we get attacked and then blame the President for not stopping it.

Others:
Hot Air, The Moderate Voice, Sister Toldjah, Stop the ACLU, Confederate Yankee, Outside the Beltway, AJ Strata, Rick Moran, Macsmind, Michelle Malkin, The Sandbox, Flopping Aces, Ninth State, Sensible Mom, Nathan Branfield, OKIE on the LAM, The View From North Central Idaho, GroupIntel, The Unalienable Right, Flap's Blog, Don't Go Into The Light, Donkey Stomp, Independent Conservative, Iowa Voice, Wizbang, Left Wing = Hate, Amber, Small Town Veteran, Joust the Facts, A Lady's Ruminations, Gateway Pundit, Michelle Malkin 1, Michelle Malkin 2, Michelle Malkin 3, Chickenhawk Express, Riehl World View 1, Riehl World View 2, A Blog For All, The Political Pit Bull, Blogs For Bush, UrbanGrounds, Captain's Quarters

***UPDATE - MORE LEFTY CRAZINESS***
Glenn Greenwald has an long post up about this, and I don't even need to get past the first two paragraphs to realize what a pile it is:

I just this morning read the obviously significant USA Today article detailing the fact that the NSA is maintaining a comprehensive data base of every call made by every American – both internationally and domestically – whether they have anything to do with terrorism or not, obviously all of this without warrants or oversight of any kind. I'm not going to pretend to have all of the legal issues figured out in two hours, and so I won't yet opine as to whether there are serious grounds for arguing either that this is legal or that it’s illegal.

But there is one highly significant, and revealing, item buried in the USA Today article regarding Qwest's refusal to cooperate with the NSA’s demands (and it heroic refusal to capitulate to the NSA’s intimidation tactics and threats) that it turn over its customers' calling data:

First Glenn says that the NSA "is maintaining a comprehensive data base of every call...", but in his very next paragraph notes how Qwest stood up to the big bad NSA. I don't think I need to explain to anyone that they clearly don't have a "data base of every call" if they don't have Qwests information, not to mention all the cell phone companies, which is all millions of people (myself included) use these days.

I'm a little confused how this guy has such a large readership, when he begins a post with contradicting sentences. Obviously this isn't the most important thing in the world, but why would I go any further?And calling Qwest "heroic"!? You don't think that's just a little overboard? I suspect Stephan Colbert is a hero too right? Don't sue me Glenn! I'm not infringing on your free speech, I'm mocking it.

Anyway libs, get ready to change your number because you know the Bush administration is clearing out the NSA (obviously not everyone there is friendly to them) and spending the rest of their time in Washington searching for the phone numbers of anyone who voted for John Kerry and then finding out what numbers they called. You better be scared, because... well, they can't really do anything with that information anyway. This evil war criminal administration really got you this time didn't they!