For the right: Orin Kerr

For the left: Glenn Greenwald

Both are polite and coherent, even for non-lawyers.  Neither takes a firm stance, but together, they make a nice starting primer on the issue.  I’m not sure Greenwald one-ups Kerr on the legal analysis, but he ends with an indisputable truth about the lay of the legal landscape:

Ultimately, however, the always-overarching issue is that it doesn’t really much matter how these fascinating and academic statutory debates are resolved because the administration has claimed repeatedly that it has the right to violate statutes like this if its doing so is in pursuit of the national defense. As Professor Kerr put it, with great understatement:

Of course, all of the statutory questions are subject to the possible argument that Article II trumps those statutes. As I have mentioned before, I don’t see the support for the strong Article II argument in existing caselaw, but there is a good chance that the Administration’s legal argument in support of the new law will rely on it.

The Leader ordered this collection of sweeping data on the communications activities of Americans because The Threat of Terrorism required it. Therefore, even if multiple statutes make doing that a criminal offense, The President has the power to do it anyway. That, of course, is the Administration’s view of the world. And that is the epic constitutional crisis we have in our country.

At this preliminary stage, I’m not entirely convinced that the NSA broke any laws here.  It’s not like they tapped phones, or subpoenaed phone records without probable cause.  The telecommunication companies (except Qwest) gave your phone records to the NSA.  It seems to me that the voluntary provision of those records is against the law.

RELATED:  Lots of backlash against the telecoms who don’t care about your privacy.  Atrios recommends that you switch to Qwest.