The US wiretapping story is growing legs daily. It really makes you wonder when the current administration will realise that even when you are hunting and prosecuting terrorists, the rule of law applies. In Guantanamo, through renditions, torture, secret prisons and illegal kidnappings, and now through these wiretaps they have gotten themselves in a horrible legal muddle. Worse, because of all this they are now failing in one of their primary missions: to bring terrorists to justice.

The administration's wiretapping policy has now endangered its cases against a range of other accused terrorists as defence lawyers scramble to discover if illegal taps were used to gather evidence against their clients. Yesterday Daily Kos has a lively discussion of the illegalities involved in the wiretaps here. Kos also reveals the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA), which grants warrants for some wiretaps, had to modify 173 requests in 2003 and 2004 and speculates on the reasons why.