A complaint from Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, the federal judge who oversees the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Court, helped spur the suspension, officials said. The judge questioned whether information obtained under the N.S.A. program was being improperly used as the basis for F.I.S.A. wiretap warrant requests

According to those officials and others, reservations about aspects of the program have also been expressed by Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, the West Virginia Democrat who is the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and a judge presiding over a secret court that oversees intelligence matters.

A former National Security Agency official wants to tell Congress about electronic intelligence programs that he asserts were carried out illegally by the NSA and the Defense Intelligence Agency. Russ Tice, a whistleblower who was dismissed from the NSA last year, stated in letters to the House and Senate intelligence committees that he is prepared to testify about highly classified Special Access Programs, or SAPs, that were improperly carried out by both the NSA and the DIA. "I intend to report to Congress probable unlawful and unconstitutional acts conducted while I was an intelligence officer with the National Security Agency and with the Defense Intelligence Agency,"

The 'poisoned fruit' issue only matters if the administration ever intends to bring the people they're investigating into a criminal court.

If Bush is above the law, what is the reason for having law in the first place? Is there any point to be made about how the law actually reads if it is disregarded anyway? This thought process can be applied to congress and the Constitution. Is there any point in having a “supreme law of the land� if congress disregards it?

Hmmm... Course, that might start up another "insurgency" a little too close for comfort...

First, Bush does not think that he is required to do so under the constitution. I think he is correct.

FROST: So what in a sense, you're saying is that there are certain situations, and the Huston Plan or that part of it was one of them, where the president can decide that it's in the best interests of the nation or something, and do something illegal.

NIXON: Well, when the president does it that means that it is not Illegal.

FROST: By definition.

NIXON: Exactly. Exactly. If the president, for example, approves something because of the national security, or in this case because of a threat to internal peace and order of significant magnitude, then the president's decision in that instance is one that enables those who carry it out, to carry it out without violating a law. Otherwise they're in an impossible position.

KEITH OLBERMANN: Mr. Bush's defenders on this have said, in fact, he himself has quoted Article 2 of the U.S. Constitution. It says, he says, that it gives him the authority, requires him to protect this country in any way necessary. Is that absolute? JOHN DEAN, FORMER WHITE HOUSE COUNSEL: Well, I've never read Article 2 quite as broadly as it's being read now, and I've often thought what would have happened if Richard Nixon had said, Well, you know, what this is really about is my commander-in-chief power. That's why I'm breaking into Daniel Ellsberg's office, to see if he's passing out these Pentagon papers to the communists. That's the parallel argument. It was probably the best defense that Nixon might have made, but he actually didn't even go that far. OLBERMANN: I can remember well, though, that President Nixon's rationalization, and this was in the David Frost interviews three years after the resignation, on all of this was, if the president does it, then it is not illegal. Is there a legal or constitutional support for that idea? Is there something in how Lincoln suspended habeas corpus and ignored the Supreme Court during the Civil War that gives the president the right to define an emergency and declare what's necessary to deal with that emergency, all by himself? DEAN: There's no question a president has what they call prerogative powers, and that's what Nixon was talking about with Frost. In fact, they were talking specifically about Lincoln in that exchange. And it's a long-held belief that, indeed, it comes-goes all the way back to John Locke's thinking on executive powers, that there are inherent powers that nobody will put into a Constitution, that in case of an emergency, the president can exercise those prerogative powers. What's interesting, Keith, is, every time a president does exercise his prerogative powers, he tends to get himself in trouble, whether it be JFK with the Bay of Pigs, whether it be Eisenhower with U-2 flights, whether it be Richard Nixon or Lyndon Johnson escalating Vietnam without congressional clearance, and Nixon's actions himself. They all seem to get in trouble when they go into this area. And we see it again today.

Some judges who spoke on the condition of anonymity yesterday said they want to know whether warrants they signed were tainted by the NSA program. Depending on the answers, the judges said they could demand some proof that wiretap applications were not improperly obtained. Defense attorneys could have a valid argument to suppress evidence against their clients, some judges said, if information about them was gained through warrantless eavesdropping that was not revealed to the defense

I was being kind. Actually your statement is racist.

Audience member: We’ve got to give the President the flexibility to protect me. I use my cell phone all the time and I don’t have any problem with the folks listening to the conversations I have because they’re appropriate conversations. And the audience bursts into applause.

Depending on the answers, the judges said they could demand some proof that wiretap applications were not improperly obtained.

Defense attorneys could have a valid argument to suppress evidence against their clients, some judges said, if information about them was gained through warrantless eavesdropping that was not revealed to the defense